Best way to print your own 8x10's?

[gmess]

Hello again!

Thanks for all the help a few weeks ago with my screen capture question. With all of your help, I was able to get a copy of PowerDVD 6.0 which is a HUGE upgrade over my POS pre-installed PowerDVD and I began making my first screen caps. They look awesome and I can't belive it was that easy! I thought I had to have some program to make screen caps!

Now I have a new question for all of you. How do you go about making your 8x10's? I have printed a couple and while they look great from a few feet away they are pixelated at close range. Is there a way to make them any sharper? I was able to get some High Def Professional Ultra-High Gloss paper on clearance at target this week so I have good paper. How do you guys go about printing your caps? Does it make a difference if I print from .bmp or change it to .jpg? Honestly any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks again!

Glenn

[mikedx]

gmess,

Photoshop is the only way to go. The images from dvd's is around 150 dpi or so. To get good 8x10's, you need 300 dpi. Photoshop has a feature that will actually increase the resolution. Though hi tech magic, it interpolates between two pixels to create one in between to up your resolution to what you need.

The high quality paper is necessary, but it won't make a difference unless you have the high resolution image to start with. And of course you have to tell your printer you are printing on high quality paper.

I've searched high and low for other software, but this is the only one I've found that will give you the 8x10 from screencaps that you need.

If you go that route, let me know and I can give you instructions for using it.

Mike

[robertderidder]

If you only want to enlarge the resolution and minor adjustments got with a program like PhotoZoom, which is far cheaper than PhotoShop and has better scaling abilities. Click here

[marko]

PhotoZoom is indeed cheaper, but retail is still $129,-

[robertderidder]

marko said:

PhotoZoom is indeed cheaper, but retail is still $129,-

You are right, I really meant PhotoMagic, which is $ 49 dollars.

[robertderidder]

starbuck said:

Ever heard of Torrents

Sure, stealing is always the cheapest option.

[Bill]

Welcome back Starbuck! ;D

[gmess]

Thanks for the replies so far, everybody. Jasc Paint Shop Pro came pre-installed and I just tried looking around in that program. It looks like I can improve the resolution using this software. Do you think this will work? It says that the image resolution from my cap is only 2.5ppi...do I really need to take it all the way up to 300ppi? That seems like it would make the image HUGE!

[robertderidder]

Well if it's really 2.5 ppi for the size you want, there's no way to get a 300dpi, whatever you do. for an 8x10 @ 300dpi, the images would be 2400x3000 pixels. But 150dpi is mostly good enough.

[marko]

Go into the options menu of PowerDVD and select the advance settings (where you can alter the dir. for your screenshots) If it's correct you can adjust the filesize of the "dumped" screenshot.

Then in Paintshop open your image and resize it 110%, save it and resize it again 110%, do this multiple times, then use "auto correct" or "auto balance" (dunno how Jasc calls this option) and voila you have a decent image.

[mikedx]

I've used JASC and imported from dvd at 150 dpi. In the PowerDVD menu, click on configuration, then advanced, then click on the snapshot tab. You need "capture to clipboard" and "original video source size".

I think if you switch to "capture to file" you will get even better resolution, but not the 300dpi you want. I haven't tried marko's trick though.