Image size for competition entry.

I have seen that a diving magazine (won't mention which) is running a photography competition. They say they accept digital photos *but* when you read the size that they require I don't see how many people can enter?

The rules say that the photo can be entered as either a .jpg or .tif *but* must be 297x210mm (A4) at 300 dpi. This equates to 3508x2480 pixels, which is 8.7megapixels. I don't know of any cameras more than 8MP and the majority of people would be shooting at 5MP or less. They also state that if they consider a photo to be worthy of a double page spread they reserve the right to request a bigger (presumably twice as big) file.

Any thoughts or comments? Would you enlarge a 5MP photo using something like, say, Genuine Fractals? It just seems to me that there won't be a lot of entries from digital photographers otherwise.

David

You need to "upsize" your image if those rules must be strictly followed.

If you are using photoshop, then you need to go to Image -> Image Size.

Click the box for resample image. Then adjust the dimensions (in pixels) to fit your needs. If the image is not the same aspect ratio as the contest requires, then when you resize, take the smaller side and make it the required size and the larger side should exceed the larger number (3508). For the method, select Bicubic Smoother as recommended to my by Julianne and Danial-san from Adobe. Then crop down to 3508 x 2480.

You will then need to use Filter -> Sharpen -> Unsharp mask to get the photo into sharpness.

Don't mix dimensions, pixels and DPI. Do everything in Pixels. Otherwise it gets confusing.

Cheers

James

Thanks for the comments James.

My question was actually intended (though probably badly worded?) as *should* you upsize an image rather than *how* to do it. My thoughts are that by upsizing you are degrading the quality of the image by introducing data that is not originally there. I also find it odd that they insist on an image that fills a magazine page regardless of the orientation of the image. I have never seen an image taken in landscape format printed portrait to fill a magazine page?

If you must upsize an image, from what I have seen you get a better result using the Genuine Fractals plug-in for PhotoShop (Elements) than using PhotoShop its self.

David

I think that using bi-cubic smoother through Photoshop is better than Genuine Fractals, but to each his own.

Cheers

James

In comparing the choices for "up-resing", I found SI Pro from Fred Miranda to be my choice.

I guess that is why there are so many choices. We all have opinions!

Hi David

I actually seeked clarification from that particular mag editor as I had the same query. Well, he came back and said those dimensions were for a scanned slide image submission. For digital images, he mentioned "as large as possible". Obviously the answer did not help much, but i can asure you that they are not expecting 3508x2480 pixels images for digital submissions.

Perhaps you want to drop them an email?

Eric