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Resampling/Resizing >

Camera Phone Resampling/Resizing:

Make It Bigger

Note #1

This tutorial is about making a small photograph file larger.

If you want to do the opposite, go to Save for Web Resampling/Resizing: Make It Smaller.

Note #2

There's more about resampling, resizing, here.

Smaller to Bigger

If you have a small file from a cell phone, point-and-shoot camera, or website, you can add more pixels.

This is called resampling or resizing.

Make a Duplicate

We'll add pixels to a duplicate.

1) Double click on the thumbnail in the Photo Bin of the photograph that needs to be enlarged.

2) Go to File > Duplicate.

3) Click OK.

You've made a duplicate of your camera-phone photograph.

Image > Resize > Image Size

4) Go to Image > Resize > Image Size.

72 ppi to 300 ppi

5) Look for the resolution box.

The resolution is probably 72 ppi.

If so, change it to 300 ppi.

Why?

If you're using a digital SLR, you're used to working with photographs with resolutions of 300 ppi.

So, change the 72-ppi file to 300 ppi.

How Much Bigger?

A good quality 8" x 10" can be made from a file with the pixel dimensions of 3,000 x 2,000 at 300 ppi.

The above file is 10 inches x 6.6 inches.

So, enter values based on the above pixel dimensions.

3 Tick Boxes

6) Make sure all three tick boxes are selected in the lower-left corner of the window.

Resize

7) Enter the new value for the height.

The width will change automatically to maintain the same aspect ratio (constrain proportions).

Elly Rufer's subway photograph, above, is 240 pixels by 320 pixels, at a resolution of 72 ppi.

The resolution is changed to 300 ppi, as described above.

The new pixel dimensions are 1,000 x 1,333 at 300 ppi.

Enter 3,000 pixels as the new height, based on the advice in the previous section.

8) In the menu at the bottom of the window, select Bicubic Smoother.

Bicubic Smoother

9) Click OK.

What Happens?

Elly Rufer's subway photograph started out being 240 pixels x 320 pixels at a resolution of 72 ppi.

That's 76,800 pixels.

We changed:

• The resolution from 72 ppi to 300 ppi.

• Changed the new height of 1,333 to 3,000.

The number of pixels increase from 76,800 to 6,753,000.

That's a lot of calculations by Photoshop Elements!

Compare

When you click OK above, the image on your screen will enlarge.

Press Ctrl + 0 (zero) to fit the image to your screen.

Now, compare the original to the duplicate that was resized.

Double click on the thumbnails in the Photo Bin.

The two versions probably won't look different.

So, zoom in on the same small area in the original photograph and in the duplicate photograph.

Then, compare this smaller area in the two versions.

Below, the woman wearing pink in Elly Rufer's photograph was enlarged.

You can see that millions of pixels were added.

If we make a print, the resized version will look better than a print of the original photograph.

In some browsers, the startling difference between the two enlargements below is severely minimized.

Original - Enlarged

Resized Version - Enlarged

Again

There's more about resampling, resizing, here.