It’s the Christmas season. Whether you’re taking pictures for your Christmas cards or just capturing little moments of life, this information can help you get the best quality photos from your camera.

Your digital camera builds pictures out of tiny blocks of color known as pixels (short for picture element).

What is pixel count and why is it important?

The term image resolution refers to the number of pixels in a digital photo. Image resolution is sometimes stated in terms of pixel dimensions — the number of pixels tall by the number of pixels wide. Other times, resolution is expressed as the total number of pixels.

For example, one camera maker may describe a camera as offering a top resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels, and another manufacturer may characterize the same resolution as 2 megapixels. Both approaches are valid; they’re just different ways of saying the same thing. To determine megapixels (millions of pixels), multiply the image’s dimensions in pixels. For instance, a 1600 x 1200 pixel image has 1,920,000 (1600 x 1200) pixels. Because 1 million pixels equal 1 megapixel, the image would have approximately 2 megapixels.

Trust the color experts at Scrapless Press. With over 20 years experience in photo manipulation / editing and color enhancement, your photo is sure to print the best it possibly can. We carefully analyze and enhance your photo to its full potential and use a professional photo lab for real photo prints that won’t fade and are sure to be a treasured keepsake for years to come.

Effective Resolution

Effective resolution is simply the final resolution of any picture at the actual scale that it is placed within the document. If you place a 72 PPI image at 100% its effective reolution is 72 PPI. If you place it at 50% (half size) the effective resolution doubles and the result is 144 PPI. If you place it at 25% the effective resolution is quarupled and is then 288%. You can determine the effective resolution of an image by dividing the actual image resolution by the scale.

Whichever terminology you use, more pixels means larger picture files because the camera must generate a specific amount of data to describe each pixel. Aside from file size, however, pixel count has a different impact depending on whether you print the photo or display it on-screen. We suggest always capturing photos at the highest resolution your camera will allow. You can always eliminate excess pixels, but you can’t add them after the fact to gain improved print quality.

For print photos, an adequate pixel supply is crucial to good picture quality. A print from a high-resolution image rivals anything you can produce from a film camera. But a print from a low-resolution image looks soft or fuzzy. Curved and diagonal lines have a jagged, stair-stepped appearance, and fine details and subtle color transitions are lost — all a result of not having enough pixels.

Scrapless Press uses a professional photo lab to print genuine photographs for superior quality prints that won’t fade. We image at 300 pixels per inch (ppi). When possible, we suggest sending photos with at least 1200 x 1800 pixels. When in doubt, always send the largest, un-cropped, original photo. We can crop per your instructions as well as convert your photos to black and white or sepia.