Required resolution for photobook. Help!
Discussion
Hi All
I've done a couple of incredible USA road trips this year, lucky enough to see 15 states having driven over 7,500 miles.
As you'd expect, I have hundreds of photos from this trip. I wanted to have some photobooks made online to surprise Mrs. TREMAiNE but before I commit to possibly spending hundreds of pounds on some books, I thought I'd ask some questions.
I use a Nikon and was transferring the photos over Bluetooth using SnapBridge app to my phone and I was doing this live throughout all the trips.
I edited the photos on my phone, just touching up here and there where needed.
What I hadn't realised, is SnapBridge wasn't sending the full RAW images to my phone, but instead compressed the files to 1MB or less, sometimes as low as 500KB.
I always thought that the quality of a compressed file that size wouldn't look good enough to print out on an A4-sized page.
BUT, when viewing these on an 85" TV at home, they do still look really good.
It will take me months to work through the 3,000 RAW images, pick out the good ones, re-edit etc.
Do you reckon I'm safe to have these 1MB images printed?
Does the fact they look fine on an 85" display mean they'll be fine when printed out much smaller? Or does the entire printing process and paper its going on make a difference etc?
Advice please, PH!
I've done a couple of incredible USA road trips this year, lucky enough to see 15 states having driven over 7,500 miles.
As you'd expect, I have hundreds of photos from this trip. I wanted to have some photobooks made online to surprise Mrs. TREMAiNE but before I commit to possibly spending hundreds of pounds on some books, I thought I'd ask some questions.
I use a Nikon and was transferring the photos over Bluetooth using SnapBridge app to my phone and I was doing this live throughout all the trips.
I edited the photos on my phone, just touching up here and there where needed.
What I hadn't realised, is SnapBridge wasn't sending the full RAW images to my phone, but instead compressed the files to 1MB or less, sometimes as low as 500KB.
I always thought that the quality of a compressed file that size wouldn't look good enough to print out on an A4-sized page.
BUT, when viewing these on an 85" TV at home, they do still look really good.
It will take me months to work through the 3,000 RAW images, pick out the good ones, re-edit etc.
Do you reckon I'm safe to have these 1MB images printed?
Does the fact they look fine on an 85" display mean they'll be fine when printed out much smaller? Or does the entire printing process and paper its going on make a difference etc?
Advice please, PH!
Generally speaking, you want to be aiming for a resolution of 300 pixels per inch for printing photos as that's the usual resolution of the printers they use and the eye can't really resolve more than that at normal viewing distances. Depending on which supplier you use, they may use 240 ppi printers.
One of the well known pro photo labs ( Loxley Colour) recommend 300dpi and the jpeg images to be saved at quality level 10 from Photoshop (max quality is 12, which is what I would normally use despite their advice).
In order to determine if the resolution of your images is sufficient to produce the best quality prints, you need to know what size you are looking to print the images.
For example, if you are printing at A4 size, this is 8.3 x 11.7 inches, so at 300 ppi (or dpi), you would ideally want an image file which is:
8.3 x 300 = 2940 pixels on the short side
11.7 x 300 = 3510 pixels on the long side
I've just resized a couple of random photos to 2940x3510 pixels and saved it from Photoshop at quality 10, and the file sizes are 2.8Mb and 3.0Mb.
Given the above, I'd suggest that a 500kb file isn't going to give you the best quality possible.
Resolution requirements for display on a large monitor/projector are usually lower than for printing, so whilst the images may look good on your 85" display, that doesn't necessarily translate into them looking as good as they can be when printed out.
Obviously if you were printing to a smaller size than A4, the required file size would be smaller, but doing a quick test, resizing down to A5 still results in a 1.7Mb file size.
What might be worth trying is to choose one or two of your photos with smaller file sizes and just send them to a photo printer and get a couple of enlargements done at (say) A5 and A4 sizes and see what they come back like. If you're happy, then go ahead with the photobook. If not, you may be looking at going through your RAW files.
ETA - If it was me, I'd be revisiting the RAW files and processing them using Photoshop anyway, as there is a lot more control available re. exposure, colour balance, shadows, highlights etc.. when dealing with the original RAW files and editing on a proper computer rather than doing the editing on a phone, which should lead to better quality photos overall.
Also it shouldn't necessarily take you that long (months) to go through the RAW files as a quick scan through should enable you to identify the ones you want to use for the photobook (say 100 photos?) and then just edit those?
One of the well known pro photo labs ( Loxley Colour) recommend 300dpi and the jpeg images to be saved at quality level 10 from Photoshop (max quality is 12, which is what I would normally use despite their advice).
In order to determine if the resolution of your images is sufficient to produce the best quality prints, you need to know what size you are looking to print the images.
For example, if you are printing at A4 size, this is 8.3 x 11.7 inches, so at 300 ppi (or dpi), you would ideally want an image file which is:
8.3 x 300 = 2940 pixels on the short side
11.7 x 300 = 3510 pixels on the long side
I've just resized a couple of random photos to 2940x3510 pixels and saved it from Photoshop at quality 10, and the file sizes are 2.8Mb and 3.0Mb.
Given the above, I'd suggest that a 500kb file isn't going to give you the best quality possible.
Resolution requirements for display on a large monitor/projector are usually lower than for printing, so whilst the images may look good on your 85" display, that doesn't necessarily translate into them looking as good as they can be when printed out.
Obviously if you were printing to a smaller size than A4, the required file size would be smaller, but doing a quick test, resizing down to A5 still results in a 1.7Mb file size.
What might be worth trying is to choose one or two of your photos with smaller file sizes and just send them to a photo printer and get a couple of enlargements done at (say) A5 and A4 sizes and see what they come back like. If you're happy, then go ahead with the photobook. If not, you may be looking at going through your RAW files.
ETA - If it was me, I'd be revisiting the RAW files and processing them using Photoshop anyway, as there is a lot more control available re. exposure, colour balance, shadows, highlights etc.. when dealing with the original RAW files and editing on a proper computer rather than doing the editing on a phone, which should lead to better quality photos overall.
Also it shouldn't necessarily take you that long (months) to go through the RAW files as a quick scan through should enable you to identify the ones you want to use for the photobook (say 100 photos?) and then just edit those?
Edited by C n C on Tuesday 5th December 13:53
It must be really annoying to do a trip like that and then find out that some software has converted your super-duper 40Mb RAWs into <1Mb ones... but can you get 3,000 RAW files in a phone anyway? If they're 40Mb each that's 120Gb.
First, do you use the benefits of RAW? - ie adjust white balance, exposure, recover shadow detail etc? If not you may as well shoot JPG.
Second, can the photobook company work with RAW files?
I'm not sure that a <1Mb file will be up to printing well at A4 size but you could get one done first just to see. Remember there are two aspects to an image - not just the file size but the pixel dimensions. They're not always proportional.
'transferring the photos over Bluetooth using SnapBridge app to my phone'
For me this isn't the way to manage important photos. Every link in the process is a link where something can go wrong. If it was me I'd take enough memory cards and bring them home to play with on a proper computer where I know exactly what's going on. No phones, no bluetooth, no software doing weird stuff I don't want.
I took 3,000 photos in a month in NZ; going through them and picking the best wasn't a chore, I actually enjoyed it
First, do you use the benefits of RAW? - ie adjust white balance, exposure, recover shadow detail etc? If not you may as well shoot JPG.
Second, can the photobook company work with RAW files?
I'm not sure that a <1Mb file will be up to printing well at A4 size but you could get one done first just to see. Remember there are two aspects to an image - not just the file size but the pixel dimensions. They're not always proportional.
'transferring the photos over Bluetooth using SnapBridge app to my phone'
For me this isn't the way to manage important photos. Every link in the process is a link where something can go wrong. If it was me I'd take enough memory cards and bring them home to play with on a proper computer where I know exactly what's going on. No phones, no bluetooth, no software doing weird stuff I don't want.
I took 3,000 photos in a month in NZ; going through them and picking the best wasn't a chore, I actually enjoyed it
Simpo Two said:
It must be really annoying to do a trip like that and then find out that some software has converted your super-duper 40Mb RAWs into <1Mb ones... but can you get 3,000 RAW files in a phone anyway? If they're 40Mb each that's 120Gb.
Depends on the phone. My 3 year old iPhone 12 pro is 256Gb, and is available with 512Gb.Simpo Two said:
First, do you use the benefits of RAW? - ie adjust white balance, exposure, recover shadow detail etc? If not you may as well shoot JPG.
Agreed, although for important stuff like a once in a lifetime trip, I'd always go with RAW due to the flexibility of rescuing a badly exposed photo where the subject was important.Simpo Two said:
Second, can the photobook company work with RAW files?
Most don't, but if using RAW, the final step in the workflow would be conversion to JPG.Simpo Two said:
'transferring the photos over Bluetooth using SnapBridge app to my phone'
For me this isn't the way to manage important photos. Every link in the process is a link where something can go wrong. If it was me I'd take enough memory cards and bring them home to play with on a proper computer where I know exactly what's going on. No phones, no bluetooth, no software doing weird stuff I don't want.
Completely agree, although I'd further add that as well as keeping the photos on the (good quality) memory card(s), I'd set the camera to record onto both cards (if your camera supports 2 cards) as an insurance against (rare) card failure. I'd also back them up to a laptop at regular intervals during the trip as well as keeping them on the memory cards.For me this isn't the way to manage important photos. Every link in the process is a link where something can go wrong. If it was me I'd take enough memory cards and bring them home to play with on a proper computer where I know exactly what's going on. No phones, no bluetooth, no software doing weird stuff I don't want.
Simpo Two said:
I took 3,000 photos in a month in NZ; going through them and picking the best wasn't a chore, I actually enjoyed it
Having done similar in the past, it was a lot of fun sorting through them and re-living the trip. 
Simpo Two said:
I took 3,000 photos in a month in NZ; going through them and picking the best wasn't a chore, I actually enjoyed it
It's not a competition, but I took over 8k pictures during 24 hours at Le Mans this year. That's about 1 every 10 seconds for the race duration (86400 seconds in 24 hours)! The combination of trying to capture specific fleeting events (exhaust flames) and a super fast shutter speed (Canon R3) means that I typically have 30 images pretty much all the same to review for each photo I eventually select. 
I still haven't reviewed them all yet!
tangerine_sedge said:
It's not a competition, but I took over 8k pictures during 24 hours at Le Mans this year. That's about 1 every 10 seconds for the race duration (86400 seconds in 24 hours)! The combination of trying to capture specific fleeting events (exhaust flames) and a super fast shutter speed (Canon R3) means that I typically have 30 images pretty much all the same to review for each photo I eventually select.
How about filming it in 4K and picking the best frames? You'd get 25fps too.I’ve done 2 photobooks this year, very happy with both.
If you download the Cewe Photobook app, you’ll soon get the hang of importing images, and it tells you in real-time (using red, yellow or green faces) whether the images are going to look good or bad. So far as I can tell, all the phone images I sized in the app to be green turned out beautifully.
Worth a try for nothing?
If you download the Cewe Photobook app, you’ll soon get the hang of importing images, and it tells you in real-time (using red, yellow or green faces) whether the images are going to look good or bad. So far as I can tell, all the phone images I sized in the app to be green turned out beautifully.
Worth a try for nothing?
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