How to print regular photos from my online pics?

Question

You know the pictures on like facebook and flickr and photobucket, etc... What would be an ideal way to print such pics? I want to be able to make some posters out of some and just regular 4x6's or 8x10's of some, so I'm guessing I need to make some sort of negatives first, right? I have them saved on my pc with "Paint" as jpeg's. And I normally go to Walgreens for posters and stuff. But what would be the process to actually print them as real photos? Thx!!!

Answer 1

Hello PiscesPassion:



The short and simple answer is that you cannot print "decent" prints from flickr and (especially) your Facebook photos, for the simple reason that you need original scans of high resolution to make poster size prints.



Even if you started out with a high resolution digital image (of let's say 300 dpi, which you need to make decent poster-sized enlargements); Facebook's uploading process will automatically reduce the size and resolution. Larger resolutions take up more space, which costs the hosting sites more to store them.



To make a decent 4x6 photo, you need an original image with a resolution of at least 100-150 dpi, and with a minimum native size of 4x6. An uploaded picture with a native size of 4x6 at 72 dpi, which will produce a 4x6 picture on screen, will produce a soft "pixelated" photo print. Anything larger (5x7 or 8x10) would be even more severely pixelated to the point of being unrecognizable.



Elaborating what Steve P said, these photosharing sites are not suited for storing your photos for printing enlargements from. In fact, you shouldn't put any photos on those sites that you wouldn't mind "losing forever"--if the site went belly-up.



Any photos that you want to make enlargements from should be stored either on your desktop (computer's hard drive), an external hard drive, USB thumbdrive, or on CD/DVD at resultions of at least 150 dpi (for making 4x6s) and 300 dpi or larger--if you want to make 8x10s, 11x14s or larger poster-sized prints.



Hope this clears things up.

Answer 2

Quality prints, especially at poster size, have to come from the original digital file from the camera. Photos on sites such as you mentioned are highly compressed, and downsized. Even a 4 x 6 print is typically going to be pixelated and of very low quality. Printing requires a MUCH higher resolution and pixel dimension for any degree of quality compared to a computer display.



A negative is derived from FILM that has been processed, not from a digital file. Even the great majority of film prints made today first have the negative scanned into digital format before printing.



I don't know what you are meaning by "real photos"? I suppose you mean photos you used to have made from film negatives. Again, there is no negative in the print process from a digital file. Printing is done directly from the digital file, BUT .... you MUST have a high resolution, large dimension file for printing, and any photo copied off Facebook and such are NOT of sufficient parameters for printing.



Places such as that are NOT storage places for your photos. When you upload photos there, they are going to be severely compromised in quality, (though they will still look ok on screen). You cannot put your photos there, then take them off again to make large, quality prints. You have to do proper archiving of your original digital files to either CD or an external hard drive. That is what you use from which to make prints, OR, you can up load large, high resolution files to photo print labs such as Mpix in order to buy quality prints.



http://www.mpix.com



steve

Answer 3

They already are i believe, well i've uploaded photo booth pics to fb and flickr and so i suppose theyre jpegs just drag them iinto a folder. Otherwise theres probs an online convertor you can use google it :)