Ron Johnson wrote:
> I have been thinking about taking a photo down to Costco to have a
> large print made. I am at the stage in Photoshop of where I must
> now do "Image Size". This is about a 50% crop out of the middle of
> a photo and it shows as 9.66" X 10.86" now under "Image size" at a
> resolution of 180 pixels-inch. Should I save this image at 11X14
> before printing or just take it as is. Do you recommend I "Resample
> Image - Bicubic" which is the default or take another route?
> Appreciate any ideas on this. Thanks
>
> Ron
> --
> http://www.pbase.com/ronjon/

I would not take it there without resizing. Find out which equipment your Costco uses:

Noritsu QSS 2901 - use 400ppi
Noritsu QSS 3101 - use 320 ppi
Fuji Frontier - use 300 ppi

(I am not sure all of these do 11x14. If they are sending it out, some of this might not apply)

The preferable resizing routines for upscaling are fractal (expensive) or lanzcos3 (some free options). Here is what I would do:

Assuming your Costco uses Fuji Frontier, in Photoshop, go into Image Size. Uncheck "resample image" and change the ppi to 300. Click ok. Go back into Image Size. Check "resample image" and change the dimensions to 11x14 inches. Do not click ok. Make a note of the pixel dimensions. Then cancel the resize. Convert the color space to sRGB if it isn't already. Save in a lossless format such as uncompressed tiff or png.

Then use Easy Imager (free trial) to resize with the lanzcos3 method to noted known pixel dimensions. There is also Easy Thumbnails (free) but I think it will only output jpg. Those programs are available from http://www.fookes.com . Qimage also uses the lanzcos method for upsizing. My experience is with Easy Imager (which just released a new version that has a full featured free trial).

You can take your new lossless image back into Photoshop and make sure it still has the sRGB assigned (if not assign it) and make sure it is still set for 300 ppi (if not change it in Image Resize without resampling). Make sure the quality and sharpness still looks ok at 100%, if not resharpen. If the quality is poor, you might try the Mitchell method. Hopefully your original file will not have been resaved as compressed jpg.

If you want the color to be similar to what you see on a calibrated monitor in Photoshop, you can convert the image to the color profile of the target printer. Costco profiles can be downloaded here: http://www.drycreekphoto.com

Finally save it in Photoshop as a high quality jpg with the color profile attached and take it in. I think you will need to tell them not to do color correction.

Hope it helps.

Sheri