Making quality bigger prints requires more pixels. Your first solution can be to buy a camera with more megapixels. But what about the photos you’ve shot already? Sometimes you’ll need to scale them up to make a nice big print.

The big debate is over what PPI (pixels per inch) is necessary. Personally, I’ve found that 10×15 and larger prints look just fine at 150-200 PPI. Smaller prints benefit from 300 PPI. Your 16×20 or 20×24 does NOT have to be 300 PPI.

Taking a 3 MP image at 2048×1536 pixels and making a 16×20 directly puts you at around 100 PPI. That’s spreading those pixels a bit thin. You’ll see artifacts and probably won’t like the print. Software to the rescue.

Presuming you have Photoshop or PS Elements, there are basically 3 ways to upsize images.

Stair Step Interpolation – The theory here is to gradually increase the image pixel size, usually in 10% increments, until you hit your final size. If you’re using PS 6 or 7 this may be the best, but the CS versions have better algorithms for image size.

One Shot Upsize – Tim Grey and other PS gurus have stated that using the Bicubic method in the PSCS versions works fine in one step. I’ve found this to be true.

Software Plugins – For years the standard plugin for upsizing images was Genuine Fractals. Now that Liquid Resize was recently acquired by onOneSoftware I would expect to see GF getting even better. onOneSoftware also owns Genuine Fractals.

Can you stretch your 3 MP image up to a 24×30 print?? According to Genuine Fractals the answer is yes. And with minimal loss in image quality.

Try it for yourself and grab the 30 day trial of Genuine Fractals.