I'd like to have some flyers and business cards printed (in color) and
I'm having a problem with the image resolution. The print shop has
advised me that they require a minimum of 300dpi for printing - and my
photos are only 96dpi.

I have a 5.1 megapixel digital camera (Olympus 5060), but when I take
a high resolution picture, it ends up being gigantic (in size), but
still only 96dpi. I'd like to reduce the physical image size, so I can
incorporate them into my flyers, but increase the resolution to at
least 300dpi.

I have limited software (Microsoft Publisher and MS Picture It). I'm
willing to purchase additional software if necessary, but (obviously)
would prefer the least expensive option available, as I'm doing this
project on a volunteer basis for a nonprofit organization. I was told
Adobe Photoshop was a good choice, but in addition to the high cost,
I've found different versions and I'm not sure which one would be most
suitable.

The projects I'm creating are not complex (aside from the image
problems, they're within the scope of Publisher).

Any advice regarding camera setting, software, and image resolution
would be most appreciated.

Thank you for your time!

Hi, 

Image sizing is a fairly common feature in any image editor. Photoshop
(any version) would do the trick, but as you say the package is rather
expensive, especially if all you need it for is to set the dpi of a
few images.

GIMP is a Graphic Image Manipulation Program that can do just about
everything that Photoshop can do, and this includes resetting the DPI
of the image.
http://www.gimp.org/windows/
That is the link for the windows version, if you are working on MAC or
Linux, then go to the downloads area and get the appropriate version.

Another package is ImageMagick. ImageMagick is a software library that
focuses on  Converting, resizing and editing images. As a programmer
you would be much more excited about it, but for your needs the binary
Windows installation comes with an  Image editor which will allow you
to re-size and alter the DPI settings of the image. Download and
Install the "Dynamic at 16 bits-per-pixel" (First one on the list for
the Windows Versions)
http://www.imagemagick.org/script/binary-releases.php

DPI is Dots Per Inch, so when you change the DPI from 92 or 72 to 300,
the images size on your screen is going to change quite a bit. Also,
using 300dpi images is going to make the MSPublisher files much
larger. I would not be surprised if a 5meg project suddenly became a
50 or 80 meg project.

by the way, both of those image packages are free open source projects.


thanks, and Happy Holidays. 

webadept-ga