Wedding album

[Newtome]

I am trying to help my friend create her wedding album. She had a professional photographer and got a disk back with 275 pictures. Most of them needed to be retouched because she didn't realize how bad her skin was (lots of sun damage). I have spent many many hours retouching, learning photoshop elements, looking at online wedding albums etc and now think I am ready to design the pages. My first question is this, many of the albums I have seen have a picture which has been placed on a 2 page spread and then the opacity has been reduced. I like this as a background for other photos. How do I get a photo (example of the picture I have is 11.378 in wide by 17.067 inches high, resolution 180, that is portrait. Landscape photos are reversed 17.067 wide by 11.378 high 180 resolution), on a two page 12 x 12 album (total 12 high by 24 wide) without distorting and losing resolution? I really want to do this but am lost on my first step and can't figure out how it is done. Also, after I get the album designed, then what?

[Wags374]

After you get the ablum designed have it printed in a bound book. My favorite is Viovio (www.viovio.com) - check out this page (http://www.viovio.com/wiki/index.php?structure_id=454) for tips on scrapping layouts that work for bound books.

Now to the problem of dropping a low resolution picture across a 24x12 space. At the very least you will need to crop it to fit - but at that low of resolution its not going to look crisp.

There have been a few threads on improving resolution in the general elements section - the info in this one (http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28906&highlight=increase+resolution) might be useful.

[Newtome]

I am trying to get a grip on resolution and it is very slowly sinking in a little. I just wonder why, if you are saying it is a low resolution, why a professional photographer would have done such a low resolution and submitted it to my friend on a CD.
Thank you
Elaine

[Wags374]

Maybe these were proofs? Or were intended to be printed at home? Most places print at 300 dpi.

Perhaps you can try cropping them to 24x12 at 300dpi - then click on view in "print size" and see how they look. If they aren't terribly pixelated they should be okay for backgrounds that are lightened.

[aa6660]

Make sure that you are looking at the right pictures on the disk. I know when I have worked with a disk made at Wal-Mart or someplace like that, that if you use the automatic save to computer, you are really only saving a thumbnail type image. If this is the case, put the CD in the computer, and instead of opening it, you want to explore it. Look and see if you find the "real" pictures in a different area.

[aa6660]

Now that I go back and look at it, I don't really think those dimensions are "poor or low resolution" for work given to a client on a disk. I'm guessing that was at least a 6mp camera if those were the original shots.

[Wendy]

Hi ...

The size & resolution is exactly the same as ut of my Canon 300D ... so its a nmormal sized image ... but one thng you do need to check is that you are not infringing the photographers copyright by printing out the photographs ...

Wendy :)

[Newtome]

Thank you all for your input and saving me lots of time and effort by putting the cart before the horse. My friend gave me the CD's she got from the photographer so that I could do the retouching. I have finished with that and now will have her look at the albums so we can start on the designs.

[Wags374]

Just got Robert Redwood's newsletter and he has an article about DPI, PPI, Pixels, Resolution, Image Size, Document Size, Print Size, Quality..... Thought I'd pass along the link in case it would be of help. http://www.easyelements.com/image-quality.html