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photo printing question

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NutmegCT

NutmegCT

Great Pumpkin
Bronze
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Help!

Say you have a graphic (a .gif file of a circle with a pattern on it) which you want to print exactly at 8" by 8" on a sheet of paper.

I can mess around with pixels and resolution, but that's only for the 'puter screen. How can I print the image at a specific "inches" measurement height by width?

I *think* I'm asking: how I can stretch or compress what I see on the screen so that it's exactly an 8 inch circle when printed. Can't find a way to tell the printer to do it!

Thanks.
Tom
 
Most image programs have a "resize" capability that will allow you to resize any image based on physical size or on pixels per inch. Keep in mine you will loose resolution as you increase size, so unless the image is high-res to begin with, the chances are it will be very grainy and pixelated when enlarged and printed.
 
It depends on the program you're printing with. Many of them will let you specify a scale for the final output, as will some printer drivers (they're all a little different). Or, you can load it into a desktop publishing or wordprocessing program like MS Publisher or Word, stretch it to fit whatever you need, then print it.
 
Tom,

It also depends where the image originated.

If it's a scanner or a raw camera photo you can probably
size it to 8X8 and get a good image with a TIFF format.
That much ink, you need a high quality paper also.

Most anything you screen capture or download off the web
will be pretty low res and yield poor image at 8X8 size.

If it's a very simple image, ask someone with a graphics
program to draw it for you and convert it to a full size
8X8 pdf file and print it. You'll lose a little quality,
but not that much.

d
 
Yes! It worked! I created a Word document on a custom 8x8 page, then pulled the graphic into the document and resized it to fit the 8" square.

Now it's an 8" diameter circle printed on a standard 8.5x11 page. Yeehaa!

(obviously I'm a man of simple pleasures ...)

Here's the graphic - anybody want to guess what I'm using it for?
 
Some sorta Christmas light "effect" thingie?
 
hmmmm - close ... but no guitar ...

think "dissection"

hih hih hih hih
 
hmm... bit too "new" fer me. I'll stick to frogs 'n LBC's.
 
It's an "image dissector"! I'll bet you've waited all your life to see one! Also called a Nipkow disk, it was used in very early television systems.

Be still my beating heart!

Here's a link to one of the models I'm using.

https://bs.cyty.com/menschen/e-etzold/archiv/TV/mechanical/scanningdisc.htm

When finished (?) the system will send/receive mechanical TV pictures over radio or wires, using pretty much the same techniques as TV used before 1930, but with more modern electronics.

Believe it or not - before 1930 there were (test) transmissions of high-res, 3D, infrared, and color "live action pictures". The first TV drama was The Queen's Messenger, broadcast by WGY in Schenectady NY in 1928.

Here's a closeup of the base-model image-dissector disk in action. If you squint just right, you can see the image on the right side of the disk.

Onward through the fog!
 
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