[magusbuckley]

Hello:

I was talking to a lady who will be designing a graphic for one of my web pages. When I asked her what format it would be in, she mentioned sending to me in two or three different formats. One of them, she said, will allow me to resize images without loosing quality. We wound up using a different artist for the job and I don't have the heart to ask the first lady what the file format has to be for those types of graphics. I had forgotten about it until we started playing with Visio here at work. I noticed that those little images can be blown up to any size, but the image doesn't loose quality.

Do any of you know what that format is?

Thanks,

Magus

[Major Payne]

She might have been considering one of the vector formats.

Ron

[magusbuckley]

Ron...

Thanks. I'll have to see if my digital imaging software at home will save files in one of those formats.

Corel Digital Photo 11 - (I think that's what it's called.)

Thanks,

Magus

[ScHwErV]

You cant take an existing picture and enlarge it beyond its original size without pixelation. No matter what format you save it in.

Vector Formatting is used when you create an image to make it scalable. Pictures are different.

[Chopin]

Yeah. The most common type of vector graphic is called Scalable Vector Graphics, and it's basically a coded image (and very large).

[froman]

I found that I can make any photo, no matter how small, into a large one, even poster size, without changing any of it's original qualities.
In Photoshop. Open up a new document and choose whatever size you want. Drag and drop the little picture into it and your photo will adopt all of the qualities of the new background.
I made a poster for a friend using some old photos they had and the poster came out amazing, without any pixilation whatsoever.

Try it and see.

[BlackHalo]

froman: that depends on the initial size of the image you're opening and also the dpi at which you're printing. I designed a poster at 450dpi and could resize it from A2 to A1 without losing much (if any) detail, whereas an A2 designed at 72 dpi couldn't necessarily be resized to billboard size. If your initial images were large (as in taken with a 14mp camera), they could easily be resized without too much loss in quality. There are limits to resizing however.

The format magusbuckley is talking about is most probably vector (considering that graphics were designed). These don't work with pixels, rather mathematical calculations which prevent them from losing edge quality when resizing. If you want to save in these formats you'll have to have drawn the vector (or have the original vector file) and then save using programs such as Freehand, Illustrator or Corel Draw. Vector files are generally much smaller than bitmap images.

[froman]

I found all that vector stuff confusing. Even found software to do it, but it was out of my range.
I was tasked by a friend to do a poster for her husband's birthday. They gave me some photos I scanned at 300 dpi, but others they had scanned themselves at 72, or 100.
I opened up a new background on PhotoShop at 300dpi and the poster size I wanted, I think it was 20x30.
I cleaned off the background on all the pictures so I just had the head shot. Some of these pictures were from the 1950s and 60s that they had scanned themselves and not at a very high resolution. I took these cleaned head shots and dragged them into my poster sized background. I enlarged the photos to whatever size I wanted. When I finished and flattened image, sepia toned it, sent it to Wal-Mart (I'm all about cheap and free). The resulting poster had no pixilation what so ever.
The picture looked as good as the original 1x1 inch photo.
How it happened is above my understanding. That I can do it and I've tested it with all kinds of pictures, is what matters to me. But you are right. If the image is pixilated to begin with, then it will stay that way, but the ones I got, they look good at 1", and they stayed looking good at 10".
To me, that is magic I can work with.
I'll leave the mathematical calculations to those who like numbers.
All I can say is to the inquiring minds to give my process a try and see if his results are what they want.
As long as at least a few people succeed, then my advice has paid off.
Luv you XOXOXOXOXO

[BlackHalo]

True enough, like i said: you can resize some images to much larger formats without noticable pixelation, but there are certainly limitations. A good scan (as you mentioned) or photo can help when resizing (even if you scan quite small photo's). I've stretched 13mp photo's up to sizes of 50cmx70cm without any visible loss of quality. But your technique isn't fool-proof. It all depends on the dpi of the original image and the amount you resize. 1" to 10" resize without much loss of quality I can understand, but 1" to say billboard size will most definitely not work.