A Good Way to Super
Size Your Digital Photos

Have you ever wanted to blow up a small digital photo to a larger size? Well, as you may know, re-sampling an image to make it smaller is a simple task. However, blowing up an image is very difficult. You tend to lose details in the photo when you blow it up. This article will show you a technique for blowing up a photo with minimal loss in image quality. I’ll assume you’re using Adobe Photoshop CS.

 

Step 1: Duplicate the Photo

The first and very critical step in this process is to backup your original photo. If you make a mistake in the process, at least you have a backup. In fact, this step should be done before any image editing task in general.
 

Step 2: Create an Enlarge Action

Right – once you’ve made a backup of the photo, access the Actions palette in Adobe Photoshop CS. At the top right of the Actions palette, you’ll see a small triangle. Click on it and select New Action from the menu that drops down.

Adobe Photoshop actions are wonderful. They allow you to record image editing tasks that you do on a regular basis so that you can save time. They are very similar to macros in Microsoft Excel.

Ok, under the New Action dialog box that pops up, enter a name for your action, the correct action set and assign a function key. Isn’t that neat, being able to assign a function key for an image editing task?

Next, you need to record the action for re-sampling the image to 110% of its original size. You can do this by performing the following:

• Click on the Record button

• Click on Image/Image Size on the toolbar

• In the Image Size box that appears, ensure that the Resample Image box is checked.

• Change the document size unit to Percent.

• In the Document Size section of the, enter 110 for the width of the document.

• Stop the recording of the action by clicking on the square button on the bottom left of the Actions palette.
   

Step 3: Repeat the Action

Now that you’ve recorded the action, let’s repeat on the image. Simply hit your assigned function key and voila, your image is re-sampled to 110% of its original size. See why we recorded the action? Recording repetitive tasks like this as an action is a huge time saver.

Continue hitting the function key until your photo reaches its desired size. I find that increasing the resolution by 10% each time is just right. However, it may depend on the photo – sometimes using 5% increments may be better.
 

Conclusion

As you can see, the above technique allows you to blow up and ‘super-size’ an image with minimal loss in image quality. I hope this tip will help you out some day. It’s very a very simple and effective technique which I employ sometimes if I need to have larger printouts.

Easily Organize Your Digital Photos

If you're getting bogged down by thousands of digital photos, then you need a good photo management program. One program that I like to use is ACDSee from ACD Systems. This software allows you to organize your photos easily using a keyword tagging system, while providing a full suite of photo editing and sharing features. ACDSee is definitely worth a look if you're in the market for photo software.

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You may also wish to read the following related articles:

The Adobe Photoshop CS Book for Digital Photographers
Learn all about image file formats and image compression
Simple techniques for touching up digital photos
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