Pacific Spirit 3: Taken in the UBC Endowment Lands

copyright © 2007 Keith Loh

Today at work I was asked to use one of my nature photos for a personal card to a company contact. I was happy to do this, however, the one they wanted was in the 'original size' stored on Flickr. This is not the true original size, it is 853 x 1280 pixels versus 2236x3504 of the output jpeg coming straight from Adobe Lightroom, a file that sits on a hard drive on my home computer too far away for me to get.

Faced with this (and wanting to get out an adequate print for a card that would be 6x10 at the most) I knew I had to scale up the picture yet keep a credible image quality. I've heard that Photoshop can scale up to a certain point and still retain good quality. I put that to the test.

Scaling in the Printer: yup, it sucks
Printing as is from the Flickr jpeg creates an image that is 3.5x5". It looks good but too small for my purposes.

Just for yucks, I then used the printer dialog for the office HP color laser (CLJ 5550HDN) to print scaled up output at 5x7. Take my word for it: it sucks. Blurry, indistinct, blotchy. Don't do it.

Now I went into Photoshop CS3 to do a series of attempts which I knew from reading other's methods to be good.

Scale up
In Photoshop, I used the Image menu -> Image Size control and scaled it up to 5x7". On the screen, right away it looks much better than the printer scale. But still not acceptable. Areas not sharp. I didn't bother printing this.

Unsharp Mark
Next step: Unsharp mask. I go to Filter -> Sharpen -> Unsharp Mask. This brings up the Unsharp Mask dialog. How much to sharpen is really a matter of taste. With Preview checked, it will show you how much sharpen will change the image. And yes, there is too much sharpening. I decided on 35% and applied it.

Result
Now that I was pleased with how the image looked on the screen, I could now try out two or three prints using photo glossy paper. Don't ask me what I think of paper, I am no expert. What I do know is that with each print I adjusted contrast values until I got one that I felt was good enough for a potential investor's card.

I leave you with the 'original' Flickr jpeg as downloaded and the resulting Photoshop scaled and sharpened version. If you can do better or have a better method, let me know.

Flickr jpeg

Photoshopped

About the image
I took this on one of the trails of the fabulous Pacific Spirit park on the grounds of the UBC Endowment Lands. Pacific Spirit encompasses rocky beaches (including Wreck Beach), wetlands but the majority are trails that go through heavy rainforest.