Editing photos

[P. Novak]

Is there anyway to enlarge a small picture without losing most of it's quality? (I'm talking about pictures on the computer)

 

[Cirith Ungol]

Is there anyway to enlarge a small picture without losing most of it's quality? (I'm talking about pictures on the computer)

Nope. Compression will always take out the detail of an image and blur the picture if you blow it up. With the right progs you can enlarge something a little bit before it looks ugly, but it's not like you can enlarge a 100x100 pixels to a 1200x1200 pixels without it looking like a close up of a postage stamp from Legoland.

 

[JohnC]

You can't resize raster images without severe degradation, but you can enlarge vector images.

 

[Cirith Ungol]

You can't resize raster images without severe degradation, but you can enlarge vector images.

Troo. Thanks for pointing that out.

 

[P. Novak]

You can't resize raster images without severe degradation, but you can enlarge vector images.

Thanks guys. Care to explain what that is, or what the difference is?


Also, what would be the best photo editing software?

 

[Hamburglar]

Raster images are pixel based (the little bits that make up digital photography) and they are the foundation of editing programs like Adobe Photoshop. Vector images are different because they use math to "describe" what the photo looks like on the screen. I think that vector images are primarily used in graphics work and not photos.

Photoshop is by far the best editing program available. However, it is expensive. If you are a college student you can find the program available at half price sometimes in book stores.

Raster is what you will be using pretty much exclusively with digital photography. I use a plugin called Genuine Fractals when I print poster sized photos and it does a great job.