kinkos - I have a cd with 3 photos that need to be converted to 300dpi image, can you do this?

Answer 1

If your images aren't already 300dpi - you are in a bit of a mess.

Most digital cameras, by default take photos at either 72dpi (for web) or 120dpi (for standard print). Which means you only have 1/2 or 1/3 of the information of a 300dpi (for portrait prints) photo.

Most photo-editing software will allow you to change the resolution of an image either larger or smaller. The problem is, if you start making the resolution higher, your image quality rapidly declines.

Knowing a little bit about photo editing can be useful. Knowing how to adjust the blue channel to soften the digital noise created or using the unsharp mask to enhance the rest of the photo to lessen the effect of the digital noise.

Sometimes, if you are lucky - you can crop the image smaller, but enlarge the DPI with very little quality issues.

With Photoshop, if you select the crop tool, give it a defined aspect ratio (8x10 - 5x7 - etc), set the resolution to 300dpi and create a crop that is smaller than the original print - you can sometimes pull it off (emphasis on sometimes). That's because the original picture size from the camera is an outrageous print size like 32x40 or 28x60.

So - to answer your question (while providing a watered down background) it's possible but you can experience quite a bit of image loss depending on the file size of the original photo.