Help required with printing

Hi all

We are trying to print a very small picture to go inside a girls locket that we are giving as a present. What is the best way to go about this, to get a picture that is clear, colourful and yet very small?

Any advice greatly recieved.

Thanks

Richard.

Richard,

As you've found, It's not easy to retain detail with so few pixels...

First thing I'd try would be to Resize the original in PSP... But leave the actual size settings the same and only change the resolution value to 300.

Then crop the image to roughly what you think is going in the locket.

Now decide what size you have to downsize to... But instead of downsizing in one lump, try going down in size in stages. So say your original was 3000 pixels wide, try downsizing to 2000, 1000, 750 etc.

It might not be any better, but there was a school of thought that considered this the best way to get the best resolution, although I think it works best when increasing size. Known as 'stair interpolation'... Always a nice phrase to drop into conversation.

Try the one step method, then the multi-step way... And then try it multi-step with a tiny bit of sharpening after each step... See what's best. Whatever method you use, make sure you don't over sharpen at the final size, as small images, although needing some sharpening, can be ruined by too 'contrasty' pixels. ('sparklies')

Buena suerte!

Rgds,
Howard

Well, been playing with this for the last hour and eventually I have something that can go in the locket. Not easy to keep the sharpness and ratios as you go down in size.

Thanks for assistance.

Richard.