file resolution please help

have a JPG with 72 pix resolution... need to make it bigger enough for a full page print out

should i just increase de pix to 300?

only have PS3

please any idea would be appreciated

What size, in inches, is a "full page print out"?

What is the total size, in pixels, of the image? (For example, when I post here, my pictures are 900 x 600 pixels. Out of camera they are 5616 x 3744.)

That info will help answer your question.

Rad

Changing from 72 dpi to 300 dpi isn't going to change anything except the dpi. The picture will still have the same x and y pixel resolution. Whether it's big enough to fill a full page depends on three things: how many pixels wide it is, how many pixels deep it is, and how big the full page is.

If you want to print it at 300dpi, you need to work out how many inches wide and deep the page is then multiply each by 300. For example, US Letter size is 8.5 by 11 inches. So your picture needs to be 8.5 x 300 pixels (2,550) wide by 11 x 300 pixels (3,300) deep. If it's smaller than that you can resize it (in this case, called 'upsampling'). Precisely how you'd do that depends on the software you're using.

In addition to the good info Rad and Garry have shared, I'll just clear up some confusion:

The ppi "tag" (Adobe uses the term "ppi" for "pixels per inch", Canon uses "dpi" for "dots per inch") is part of the Exif standard that cameras have to put into their images (Canon uses "72" as its default value) and Raw processing software does it as well, according to whatever value is specified by the usere. As was indicated, it has no effect with digital processing unless you are either preparing a document in something like Word or Photoshop and want the document to have a certain resolution for a particula viewing and/or printing size and then want to place an image into that document that will fill a particular size.

The other application where the reolution figure needs to be a particular value is when offset and other commercial printers require a specific resolution and to have it specified in the "tag". Some printing services, for example, require a tag of 300. Some stock agencies do as well, since they provide images to commercial agencies for commercial printing.

But for most digital printing processes/printers/lab​s, the actual ppi figure doesn't get used unless the printer is told to use the figure to print at the "actual size". Otherwise you just tell the printer to print at a given size in inches, say a 4x6 or an 8x10, and the printer handles the resizing of the image to print at that size no matter what the actuall resolution it is or that the "tag" says.

In those cases, the "real" concern it that the image you are using/submitting to print has a high enough pixel resolution to give a quality of print that meets your expectations/hopes. A "standard" value that has always been given out is 300 ppi for an optimal print quality as a general "rule of thumb", but I've has excellent results printing 8 MP images at 12x18 prints sizes, which works out to less than 200 ppi, so you really don't have to be too picky unless you want to resize the image first and then apply some "output sharpening" to it. In your image resizer, you can specify the dimensions in pixels and view it at the "print size" or you can resize it in dimensions of inches and then specify the ppi value (in Photoshop/Lightroom, or the dpi value in the Canon software). This gives you a bit more control over the precess rather than letting the printer take over the resizing. But the "plain jane" approach of just printing from a full unresized file will typically work just fine.

Actually, there are some reports that doubling that 300 ppi figure can give a bit better results, or, with I believe Epson printers printing at I believe 720 ppi. This is because the actual printing resolution, or dots per inch, is higher and the printer can use the 600 ppi/720 ppi of real image resolution to give a bit more fine detail. I haven't delved into that, like I said I've had great prints sharp at the fine detail level at under 200 ppi, but things do start to go "mushy" with prints from my old 4, 5 and6 MP bodies with the larger prints!

the "300 dpi" standard comes from offset printing standards, where the LINE SCREEN used on the press determined the size of the dots to make halftones.

The standard line screen is 150. Thus the standard was to have "twice" the data in the PhotoShop file as the linescreen = 300 pixels per inch

Many magazines and other printed materials are done at 133 line screen, which means the PhotoShop file could be smaller at 266 dpi and it would APPEAR to be to same print quality.

The very highest quality art books were often published using a 200 line screen, thus a 400 ppi PhotoShop file.

Currently, many printers have digital presses - and there is no film negatives or plates made, but the "simulate" a 150 line screen -- thus the standard is still 300 ppi for all images used for hi-res printing. But you can easily get away with 250-280 ppi and you would not notice the difference.

I have also seen many tests where throwing TOO many PPI at a printer will actually make the images softer, because it is trying to round down the information to get to one dot. DO NOT confuse the resolution of a printer with the pixel image of a photo. When a printer is rated at 3600 dpi or 7200 dpi, that is the micro level ink dots that the printer head is capable is producing.. that is NOT the resolution the the IMAGE is being laid down on the paper.

A good general rule is any image under 11" x 17" ( a two-page full spread) should always bee 300 ppi. On larger prints, like posters at 24" x 36" you can get away with 200 ppi and they will look fine. If you try to make a 300 ppi image at 24" x 26" it would be 222.5 MB!

No camera shoots a 200 MB image, so to get a file that big, you are just upsampling anyway. There are pro and cons to upsampling, and there are a few plugins that will "fake" pixels as you scale up and it will look "better". That is another topic all together.