Increase DPI / Image Quality for Academic Book Publishing

[Andy55555]

I know this topic has come up before, but everything I read makes me more confused.  My situation is simple.  I took photos with my iphone, which I want to include in an academic book that I am getting published (Mohr Siebeck).  They advised that the photos are not high enough quality.  They advised they need to be 113mm in width, and at least 300 dpi, but preferably 600 dpi.  I attached six sample photos here (I will crop some, lighten some up, and print all of them in greyscale).  

I told the publisher that I have Affinity software that can increase the dpi, but they advised that this will not increase the quality of the photo.  So, I am confused concerning whether Affinity can get these up to par, or if I simply need to throw the photos away.  Different comments in the forum suggest different ideas concerning dpi vs dpi vs. resizing vs resampling, etc.

Thanks very much for any advice, I desperately need it!  The more specific the better, as I am a novice at this software!

Andy

  

[firstdefence]

A few questions to get a clearer picture would start the ball rolling.

1. What iPhone did you use?
2. What is the format of the images you have? jpg, heic
3. What are the dimensions and DPI of the images you have?
4. Do you have access to a digital camera and can you retake the images?

[Gabe]

Hi @Andy55555,

Welcome to the forums. 
I had a look at a few photos and they are 
113mm @600 DPI needs at least 2669w. So you do not need to upsample the image You can use this tool to check the minimum size in pixels for printing:
https://www.pixelcalculator.com/index.php?round=&FORM=1&DP=1&FA=&lang=en&mm1=113&mm2=113&dpi1=600&sub1=+calculate+#a1
 

[Gabe]

Hi @Andy55555,

Welcome to the forums. 
I had a look at a few photos and they are 
113mm @600 DPI needs 2669 px width. So you do not need to upsample the image You can use this tool to check the minimum size in pixels for printing:
https://www.pixelcalculator.com/index.php?round=&FORM=1&DP=1&FA=&lang=en&mm1=113&mm2=113&dpi1=600&sub1=+calculate+#a1
 

[Gerard O]

The photos you posted are quite small, the largest is only 1000 pixels on longest side.

If you took these photos then perhaps check your originals and see if you have larger versions. I know nothing of iPhone but I know even an average phone would produce larger files than these

 

[Medical Officer Bones]

I checked all your photos, and aside from the very first one (the box), all more than suffice in regards to pixel resolution (4032x3024px). What you would have to do is change the ppi resolution parameter to 300 or 600ppi without resampling the images (the current set ppi is 112ppi).

At 300ppi and no editing they would print at approx. 34 by 25cm, and at 600ppi they'd print at approx. 17 by 13 cm. Which means in terms of pixel resolution it is more than enough.

Steps: open your image, document-->Resize Document, turn off "resample", change DPI to 300 (or 600 depending on your needs), and click "Resize". Export a new JPG (File-->Export).

The trouble with these photos is the rather fuzzy and compressed image quality, but that is to be expected when taking pictures with a cell. And the lighting conditions are less than ideal, of course. Things could be improved a tad with standard image corrections, but only up to a point. The book, for example, is photographed from a poor angle. The outdoor evening shot shows a lot of noise, and wouldn't print very well. Details are lost here.

That said, you'd get quite reasonable greyscale print quality with some processing for the other ones. A bit of denoising and unsharp masking goes a long way to improve the overall look. After that you could scale them down 50%, sharpen a bit more, and apply some tonemapping, lift the shadows, and use a s-curve to improve the overall quality more.

And finally use the Black and White adjustment to convert to a good looking contrast rich greyscale version. Ideally use the free NIK Silver Efex 2 for a good conversion. Then do a print test on high-quality paper.

But as far as resolution goes, these should do. I wouldn't want to print these at 600ppi, but at 300ppi and scaled down by 50%, they'd be quite acceptable after some processing.

Example image: this will print at 17cm by 12.8 cm at 300ppi.

PS don't forget, PPI merely tells a layout application and the printer at what dimensions the photo would be printed relative to the pixel count.

[Andy55555]

Thank you all very much!  Medical Officer Bones, your instructions seem to have worked.  My issue now is that when I insert the image into MS Word (MS Word for Mac 16.16.4) 2016, I have no idea if it chnaged the size again. Now I did eliminate compression in Word (File-Reduce File Size-High Fidelity (Maximum PPI)).  But if I insert the image, and then right click it in Word and save it to my desktop, the image is a reduced DPI.  Pretty frustrating. I've spent half the day on one photo.  Thanks for any advice.

 

Andy

[Andy55555]

Re: my last message, here's a cropped image I am trying to work with inserting into Word.....

PPN720865522_00000857---cropped and 113selectionwithback.tiff

[Andy55555]

And I take back my excitement. No clue why, but in contrast to the file that I pasted above, the others I am trying to do the same for are not working. I'm doing the exact same thing.... pen your image, document-->Resize Document, turn off "resample", change DPI to 300 (or 600 depending on your needs), and click "Resize". Export a new JPG (File-->Export).

It produces a 72 DPI image. I've tried tiff and jpeg.  

[Gabe]

Try to disable this in Export > More:

[Andy55555]

That worked!!!  Thank you so much. I was pulling my hair out last night trying to figure it out.

If you have any ideas about why MS Word won't maintain the original file size, please let me know.  I'm trying every combination I can think of.  (MS Word (MS Word for Mac 16.16.4) 2016). I did eliminate compression in Word (File-Reduce File Size-High Fidelity (Maximum PPI)).  But if I insert the image, and then right click it in Word and save it to my desktop, the image is a reduced DPI.   And if I just "get info" on the size of the word doc, it's smaller than the file size of the image, so I know it's shrinking it.  THX for any advice!

[v_kyr]

Don't know if your Mac version of MS Word offers the same here (linking in, instead of embedding images), but if a document is to be printed (commercial or high quality), another approach is to Link to the images rather than embedding them. That keeps the document file size at an absolute minimum, but the image files need to accompany the document in order to render optimum quality when printed.

See also: Insert pictures in Office for Mac

...and...

• Disabling picture compression of images on word for mac 2016

• Losing image resolution when placing an Image into Office for Mac 2011

• ... etc. just search the net for this topic ...

[Andy55555]

Thank you very very much! You solved my problem.  Linking in makes the most sense, I don't know why I didn't think of that!

 

I really appreciate everyone helping me out!  

 

Andy