You never said which graphics program you are using. The resolution needs to be well over 72 pixels per inch, which is probably what you have saved the photo as. My printer gets upset at anything less that 96 dpi. I like 150 or 300 but that can create a huge file but makes the printed photo so much better.

You can get some idea by increasing you zoom level and you soon start to see the jaggies at 72dpi, increase that to 150 and zoom again and see the noticeable differences in the edges.

In your graphics program open the photo, now look across the top for image or similar, click this and look for 'resolution', 'attributes' or 'resample' - or something similar and click that. This brings the window where you can set your size and depth of resolution.

Owbist,
Thanks for the reply.
I am using Irfanview as my photo editing but if you can suggest another free one that is better , I would love to try one.

Have you tried this in Irfanview? After you crop the picture click on Image > Resize/Resample and set the size you want and at the bottom left of that screen set the 'DPI' to 300 and when you save the picture set the quality slider to the right. If the part of the image you crop is very small and you enlarge it to 5 x 7 you may have a hard time getting good results. The only free program I know of that gives better results than Irfanview is The Gimp and it has a pretty steep learning curve for new users.

Thanks Bob, I will try that.

Photofiltre has been highly recommended in other forums I visit. Seemingly a better, fuller program than Irfanview - and I do not knock Irfanview.

Here are a few more.Xnview is very similar to Irfanview so you might miss that one.

I believe it was Mikie who has spoken well of PaintNET

Bob and Owbist,
Maybe I am doing something wrong.
I open my large photo in irfanview. Then I resize it to 800 by 600. Then I resave it ince with 72 resolution then again with 300 resolution.
Then I upload them to Kodakgallery and in both picture it tells me that I cannot get even a 4 by 6

How big a section are you taking of the original photo? If the original is high resolution, but the part you're saving after the cropping is relatively small, that may be the problem.

Krudzu9,
Maybe that is the problem. For example if I want to take just one person out of the middle of a large photo and have that printed as a nice close up of that person is that not possible.
I have included a large photo to explain what I mean. I would like to take the person alone out of this photo and print her in maybe a 5 by 7 format. Is that possible?

{{gwi:1459955}}

I think you're doing something wrong or have a software problem. Are you resizing to 800 X 600 and then cropping?...which would result in a big loss in quality, but shouldn't prevent printing (even though it would look crappy). I downloaded your photo and did two different size crops using Irfanview. The sequence is to select the starting point for the crop, then hold down the left mouse button, and then drag the rectangle to the crop size you want. After you've done that, Go to Options, and select "JPG Lossless Crop". After it's saved (as a new file), open it in Irfanview and Print from there, choosing the custom size you want. Here are the two crops I did and I was able to print both with no problem. You can try following my instructions, or you could even save my crops and print from them...or do it both ways to try to figure out why you are having this problem. In any case, tell me if any of this worked.

{{gwi:1459956}}

{{gwi:1459957}}

Krudzu9,
Thank you for the instructions and crops.
I followed your instructions. At first when I went to "JG Lossless Crop" it said I had to download plug-ins for extra stuff on irfanview which I then did. Then I marked my crop, went to "JPG LC" but did not know what to crop. I just left everything as was and hit the start button at bottom, nothing happended except bringing me back to uncropped photo. What am I doing wrong.
I also copied your two crops and went to Kodak Gallery to print and they said I could print the larger one that shows the orange cone in it at 4X6 or 5X7 but on the smaller one it says no good for any size.
I really would like to know what you do in JPG LC to get the crop to stay.
Thanks for any more help. I do appreciate the time.

{{gwi:1459958}}

Thank you Urlee.
But what I have to know is how to do this and still be able to get a company like Kodak or any other photo company to be able to have enough resolution to print my photos after I want to crop them. For instance, I am trying to make a photo book and some photos I want cropped but whenever I do this I am told I do not have enough resolution. I am starting to get the hang of it by using Irfanview and then cropping but I do not understand that JPG Lossless Crop part that was mentioned above. I now know that when I save I should ave in 300 dpi but there is still something I am missing.

Here's what I get using what I posted above:
{{gwi:1459959}}

Trying to get the 5 x 7 ratio in the crop is the hardest part. The picture above is exact but it is close.

bob414-
If it's close, all you have to do is set one of the printing dimensions to "over-print" slightly. For example, I eye-balled my crops; the proportions on the second picture turned out as 339 X 467 pixels, which is equivalent to either 5" X 6.89", or 5.08" X 7", so I would set the printing proportions (which I do in Irfanview) to the second set of dimensions, print it, and then trim 0.08" off the side or mat it to 5 X 7.

Bob I just installed Irfanview to see how to crop to size.
Found it hard at first then I discovered selecting a start point,
hold down the left mouse button and drag to size. Then click
Edit and 'Cut area outside selected box. Is that how you did it?
I also realise once you have created the rectangle that way
you can drag any side in or out till you are satisfied.

Lyban, the photo below can be created quite easily once you
have done as Urlee did and removed all the background to a
single colour. You then use a mask, copy and paste then tidy
the edges of the photo.

lyban-
That's right, you do need to download and install the plugin. If you did that install correctly, you'll know it in the next steps:

-outline the cropping rectangle

-go into the Options menu and choose "JPG Lossless Crop"

-if the plugin was installed correctly, a small window should come up which gives you the choice of a new file name, or the existing file name, for the crop, and shows you where it will be saved (take note of that location). Choose "new file name" and hit "Start."

You won't see anything until you go to the Open file option at the top of the main Irfanview window, and select the file you just cropped (which will have the name "crop" in it). Then open it up in Irfanview and you can then print it the size you want from there. If you get confused by what to choose when the print window opens up, I can walk you through that, too.

Lastly, it sounds like the Kodak program may not want to print below a certain quality, so if you want to try to print the second picture I cropped for you, print it using Irfanview. Before you print the picture, you can manipulate things like contrast, etc., in another program first; just save it when you're done and go back to Irfanview to print it so you can avoid your printing problem. Just bear in mind that you're taking a pretty small portion of a much bigger picture, so it won't be razor-sharp, but will look as good as it appears above.

Stick with it, you're making progress. Let me know what happens next.

Owbist, wow what a beautiful photo you made.
Kudzu9, I follow your instructions then when I get to open the JPG Lossless Crop this is the window that comes up. Nothing about New file name.
I took a screen shot of it.
{{gwi:1459961}}

You're choosing the wrong action under options. Your screenshot shows the window that comes up when you choose "JPG Lossless Rotation," and you need to choose "JPG Lossless Crop" instead.

Recently Mikie suggested Cool Ruler on the forum and I have just used it help retain the correct cropping proportions. It easily solved that problem.

I used Photofiltre because I haven't got Irfanview on my computer at present. It has the option to set the print size and it worked correctly.

Colin

Here is a link that might be useful: Cool Ruler

Here is a screen print of what I get when I go to options.
{{gwi:1459963}}

I'm using Irfanview version 4.20, and I have two lossless choices in that window : "JPG Lossless Rotation" and "JPG Lossless Crop." You must have a slightly different version (older or newer?, I don't know). Let me suggest an alternate approach. Select the cropping rectangle as before, and, instead of going to Options, just use the keyboard: Hold down the following 3 keys simultaneously: Ctrl-Shift-Y
That's an alternative way to open the window I've mentioned...at least in my version of Irfanview.

Kudzu9.
Well, it finally worked. What I had to do was uninstall my irfanview and plugins. Then reinstall the newest version and then the plugin. Then I had the window like you had and I followed your instructions and it worked out. Thank you so much for your patience.
Amazing what I learn on these forums.
bee4mee, I am going to try that cool ruler another day. Thanks

Lyban-
Good...I'm glad you stuck with it, and it will pay dividends in the future for you. A lot of the computer skills I have aren't because I have a talent for tech stuff, but rather are the result of learning that came from struggling through my many mistakes and problems.