Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Working With Low Resolution Photos

Today I am working with Charlie. If you check out the image above your first instinct may be "oh wow what a great snapshot". In many ways it is a nice capture. Charlie is smiling and he seems pretty well lit. It also looks like a great day was happening and he must have had a very happy day at the beach. The only thing missing here really is resolution. This image is 148K which is terrific for sharing on the web, but not so terrific for enlarging. Check the image below to see what happens when we bump a low resolution image up in size. When you enlarge a low resolution image you are asking the computer to fill in information that is not there and the result is jagged pixelation. So my first step is always to smooth out the messy pixelation and then once I see what is left, I go in and add in missing detail.




Charlie in progress above

If you are thinking about ordering a custom pet portrait keep these things in mind:
#1 A 1mb image file or larger will result in a portrait with tons of yummy detail.
#2 Dragging a friend's photo off of facebook or Flickr will result in a low resolution image unless you can click around and find the original high resolution version.
#3 Your camera has quality settings and you need to set yours as high as possible when shooting.
#4 I will attempt to work from just about any image sent, but try to send me a high res image for best results. I can always enhance what you give me, and yet the portraits that you fall in love with in the Art Paw galleries are usually the ones that started out with great high resolution photos.
#5 Check out our photo tips page for more help and information about proper file resolution.

Video Below Of Another Low Resolution Image In progress

1 comment:

Manon said...

You've done great work with what you are given!
I wish I could fix the photos of my artwork!! lol!