Hi Everyone!
I just fielded a question on one of the forums I follow from a beginning digital scrapbooker, asking why her pictures get so small when she drags them onto templates.
Well, I thought we could talk about that here, in case other people are having that same question.
When you drag your photos onto a template or a digital paper, do they seem to resize along the way? If they do, what’s up with that?
Well, the change that you’re seeing all comes down to resolution. Your photo looks like it’s a different size because the resolution of your photo is different than the resolution of your template or paper.
Sound confusing? Hopefully I can explain what I mean here.
First, let’s talk about pixels and resolution.
A pixel, which is short for picture element, is a block or ball of color. Pixels are tiny, but when viewed all together, they form your picture. Pixels are kinda like a single needlepoint stitch. It’s tiny and doesn’t look like much on its own, but when you look at a bunch of them together, they make up a picture.
Resolution is a number that represents how tightly those pixels of your image are packed together. Resolution is usually measured in PPI (pixels per inch) and that measure gives the number of pixels or balls of color you have per inch on your photograph.
Okay, so what does all this have to do with the mysterious resizing that you see when you drag your photo onto your template or digital paper?
I think an example will help to explain what is going on here.
Now, let’s say that you have a picture that is 5″x7″ with a resolution of 72 PPI. That means that your photo is 360 pixels wide (5 inches at 72 pixels per inch —> 5×72 = 360) by 504 pixels high. 5″x7″ seems like a nice size for a digital scrapbooking page, doesn’t it? So, you pull up your digital paper and drag your photo onto it. Suddenly, the picture looks a lot smaller on the digital paper. What happened?
When you dragged your photo onto the digital paper, you changed its resolution. Most digital papers are 300 pixels per inch (PPI), so now your photo is showing at that resolution instead of the 72 PPI that it was originally. So, you’re basically kinda scrunching all your little pixels together into a tighter configuration. And, that 360 pixel x 504 pixel image that was 5″x7″ at 72 PPI is now only about 1.68″x1.2″ at 300 ppi. So, the change in resolution changes the size of your image.
So, what is the answer here if you find your photo getting too small when you drag it onto your template or digital paper? Your best bet is to increase the resolution before dragging the image onto your template. To do this, with the photo opened, choose Image->Image Size->Resize. Towards the lower half of this dialog box, you’ll see a box labeled ‘Resolution’. Change that to 300. Make sure that ‘Constrain Proportions’ and ‘Resample Image’ are both checked. And, I usually like to choose ‘Bicubic Smoother’ in the drop down box below the resolution number. Then click ‘OK’.
That will increase the resolution of your image to 300 and you shouldn’t see a change in size now when you drag the image onto your template.
But, I should warn you that changing the resolution dramatically can cause a loss in quality of the image. You might get better results if you increase the resolution in a few steps.
And, if you’re taking these pictures yourself, if you can, you probably want to increase the quality setting of your camera. The file size of the pictures will increase, but you’ll get better results on your Digital Scrapbooking pages.
Happy Scrapping
Mary
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