Digital Picture Help Needed!!?

[Nicole Mikloiche]

I have digital wedding pictures that I got from a bunch of family and friends. I want to use Mixbook and create a hard-covered album. When you make the album you drop different pictures into the virtual book and once you are done you save it and then the company actually prints it. It comes out looking like a coffee table book. They aren't cheap, so I want to make sure the pictures look really good.

So, here is my problem. When I drop the pictures onto the page of the book it is very small. I can resize it or zoom in on it, but I get a message saying that the picture is of too poor quality to print.

I talked to the support people at the site and they explained that the picture's resolution is too small. They said that I would have to get the source files from the people rather than getting them from the Kodak Gallery, Facebook, Picasa, etc (that is where my friends posted them).

I have 2 questions:

(1) Is there any software program that I could use that would allow me to take the pictures I currently have (the ones that I got from those sources mentioned above) and manipulate them and increase their size without degrading the quality of the photo?

(2) When they say that I need to get the source files, other than my friends putting them on some type of CD, DVD, Memory Card, etc, is there a virtual way to exchange them? For example, could they send them to me in e-mail without them getting compressed? Or perhaps those DropBox type websites?

[Mar]

Here's a resize website....
http://www.resizr.com/

check out others in google... type free picture resizer

also sending it through email might work it depends on the original image.. try it and see

Best of luck

[TheFotografist]

resizr.com or even picnik.com (that doesnt save the quality but it'll resize it). With it being so small it could be hard to save. If they send the picture before they had resized it via email it will not shrink. Or even when your on facebook actually right click and hit open in new window and it should open a bigger copy, save that one. Good luck

[Mr. Smartypants]

When you take a picture, the file of the picture that comes from the camera is often very large, as much as several megabytes. You usually reduce that size to send the pic, through e-mail. This results in a less 'quality' picture, not as sharp. It looks good on the screen but not printed.

You can resize the picture bigger but it won't be any sharper. There's no way to replace the information that was lost when the picture was reduced. This is one reason why, even if you edit pics, you always save the pics just as they came out of the camera

The BEST thing to do is to get whoever took them to load the original pics onto a CD. You have to upload them to Mixbook (I'm guessing) and that will take a while, each pic might take 20 or 30 seconds, but it's worth spending the time. Otherwise you will get pictures that look 'fuzzy', like they were taken through a piece of gauze.

[joedlh]

You can send the pictures via e-mail. However, there is usually a limit on file size. I have trouble with Gmail with anything over 6mb. Or it might be the inbox of the recipient. I'm not familiar with drop box web sites, but that would be an option. The file would not be scaled down in either approach. Ultimately, the quality will depend on two things: the resolution of the original image is the first. If they were taken by amateurs, there's a chance that they never changed the factory settings on their cameras and took low resolution shots. In that case, you're out of luck. Secondly, the technical quality (exposure, focus, composition, lighting, two kinds of motion blur) will have an impact. It will probably be a mixed bag.

[Tim]

No. You need the original files, or you have to print them smaller.

The easiest way to get the originals would be for them to send them on a CD or zip them and send them to you via dropbox or dropsend.com