High Resolution??

I hope someone can explain this to me in simple terms...I posted a picture of a swimmer on Facebook on the weekend. We had a swim meet and I took a few pics. The parents contacted me saying it was beautiful picture of their son and asked if I could send it to them by e-mail. I did. Last night they wrote to me saying "the picture is beautiful, too bad you couldn't send it with a higher resolution???"

I don't want to ask them what the *%$ they mean but I have no idea what they want me to do. Does anyone here know what they mean by Higher resolution??

Maybe they viewed a thumbnail from whatever email client they're using and based their observation on that?

Maybe they don't know what resolution means? Maybe they thought they could do a hard 5% crop and retain all detail?

There's just too many unknowns.

Very best,

Facebook most likely down-sized your photo for posting. Or you did before you posted it. Did you send them the original? Or a down-sized version you created for posting?

One of my cameras shoots at 4896 x 3264 pixels. Or 16MP. When I (my wife) posts things on FB, I give her down-sized 800x536 (0.4 MP) files to upload. They are much smaller. They upload faster. The are low resolution.

It seems to me you could have asked the parents what they wanted. If they know enough to ask, they know what they want.

I took the picture with my Canon 7D I and 70-200mm f4L. I think the picture is almost perfect but....

I will ask them tonight to clarify because I have no idea what they want. I think they want to make a print of it.

anitaw2 wrote in post #18193392
I took the picture with my Canon 7D I and 70-200mm f4L. I think the picture is almost perfect but....

It doesn't matter what you took the picture WITH. What matters are the settings you used, and what you did to the photo before you gave it to them. The 7D is a 18MP camera. A full-res raw will be about 20MB file size. I full-res JPG will be about 6MB, depending on settings. Do you have pixel dimensions and/or file size for what you emailed to the parents?

Bassat wrote in post #18193396
It doesn't matter what you took the picture WITH. What matters are the settings you used, and what you did to the photo before you gave it to them. The 7D is a 18MP camera. A full-res raw will be about 20MB file size. I full-res JPG will be about 6MB, depending on settings. Do you have pixel dimensions and/or file size for what you emailed to the parents?

If I remember it is 1000 x 1000, 300pi and quality 100% (I think...I'm at work and can't check)

anitaw2 wrote in post #18193397
If I remember it is 1000 x 1000, 300pi and quality 100% (I think...I'm at work and can't check)

If that is true, you sent them a very small rendering of the original, about 5%. That is not enough to make a good 4"x6" print. I am sure they want the original photo, so they can print it larger (8"x10") and still have it look good. If you shoot with your camera set to RAW or LARGE jpg, the original is much better than what you sent.

anitaw2 wrote in post #18193397
If I remember it is 1000 x 1000, 300pi and quality 100% (I think...I'm at work and can't check)

That's a significant crop and is essentially web resolution (lower than HD web resolution actually). Not even enough pixels to fill a standard monitor on a computer, or general HD resolution capable tablet.

If that's the image's resolution, the best way to handle it from there is to upsample the resolution with a high quality scaler, unless you have specifically resized it post-crop to this resolution.

Very best,

Bassat wrote in post #18193402
If that is true, you sent them a very small rendering of the original, about 5%. That is not enough to make a good 4"x6" print. I am sure they want the original photo, so they can print it larger (8"x10") and still have it look good. If you shoot with your camera set to RAW or LARGE jpg, the original is much better than what you sent.

I always shoot in RAW, what are the settings in exporting in lightroom would I put?

anitaw2 wrote in post #18193430
I always shoot in RAW, what are the settings in exporting in lightroom would I put?

If you want a full-resolution JPG file:
While exporting in LR:
Under <FILE SETTINGS>: choose JPG, Quality 100, and UNCHECK <LIMIT FILE SIZE TO>

Under <IMAGE RESIZING>: UNCHECK <RESIZE TO FIT>

This will give you (them) a full-resolution JPG file they can send to any print service and get a nice quality photo up to about 11"x17".

Bassat wrote in post #18193439
If you want a full-resolution JPG file:
While exporting in LR:
Under <FILE SETTINGS>: choose JPG, Quality 100, and UNCHECK <LIMIT FILE SIZE TO>

Under <IMAGE RESIZING>: UNCHECK <RESIZE TO FIT>

This will give you (them) a full-resolution JPG file they can send to any print service and get a nice quality photo up to about 11"x17".

Quality can be 80 - the file will be significantly smaller (the jpg file in MB, not the image), but the difference in image quality will be invisible to the human eye.

All the other instructions are good.

Bassat wrote in post #18193439
If you want a full-resolution JPG file:
While exporting in LR:
Under <FILE SETTINGS>: choose JPG, Quality 100, and UNCHECK <LIMIT FILE SIZE TO>

Under <IMAGE RESIZING>: UNCHECK <RESIZE TO FIT>

This will give you (them) a full-resolution JPG file they can send to any print service and get a nice quality photo up to about 11"x17".

I will somewhat counter what Bassat just said...

• I would simply tell your RAW convertor NOT to 'Resize to', and it will output the JPG file as the original dimensions of your 7D (5184x3456, unless you trimmed off a bit of the 7D frame when cropping the shot)
  
• but I would not use Quality 100, as almost no one can even see a difference vs. Quality 80...and the output file size is much more manageable at Quality 80.
  

Bassat wrote in post #18193439
If you want a full-resolution JPG file:
While exporting in LR:
Under <FILE SETTINGS>: choose JPG, Quality 100, and UNCHECK <LIMIT FILE SIZE TO>

Under <IMAGE RESIZING>: UNCHECK <RESIZE TO FIT>

This will give you (them) a full-resolution JPG file they can send to any print service and get a nice quality photo up to about 11"x17".

I would skip the Quality 100 setting, and just use Q80 instead, you will NOT be able to see the difference in quality between those two settings, in fact when compared to an original uncompressed TIFF file there is not a measurable quality difference when comparing either level of output. The really big advantage of using Q80 is that the file size will be reduced by between 40% and 60% compared to the Q100 setting. I now use Q80 whenever I export from LR for files that will be printed. I will even use JPEG Q80 with labs the offer the choice of sending a TIFF file for printing from, since I did the tests and found out just what difference the different output quality settings made.

Alan

No argument from me about QUALITY=80. That is probably the best compromise, unless you plan to print 20"x30" or something else way outside the norm.