Ahh.. hall photos. Forget black & white?

14 years ago

I know the photo topic has been beat to death BUT..

I'm going to make photo ledges for in my hall (No, still didn't do that!) I've put a great deal of thought into how I wanted to arrange the photos and what photos I wanted to use.

Lindybarts was my inspiration :)

{{!gwi}}

I was going to do all black frames, white matting on some, and black and white photos. The problem now is with the black and white.

I was going to order (1st time) through Winkflash because I will NEVER EVER use Snapfish again. Anyhow, I changed the photos to b&w using the Microsoft Office Pic Manager. Now that they're in my cart some of the photos say "Low Quality Warning". Looking again, two of the ones I changed to b&w were taken by a professional photographer. Actually the size of the b&w is a bit bigger than same photo in color. The same photo left alone in color has no warning near it. Any ideas? The other two were shots taken by my digital camera so I could see why the quality could be lousey with them.

Even though I don't want it to look visually junky I'm ready to say whatever and just go with color photos.

Wanted to note, I don't want to hang photos right on the wall. Because it's very common (here) and the nice wall arrangements I've seen, DH still thinks they look cluttered. (He grew up in a house with lots and lots of clutter) The hall is also the only place I have for them. I figured the ledges would keep me from going over board since I really do enjoy family photos.

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Comments (8)

pammyfay
14 years ago
Check CVS and other drugstores, Target, WalMart, etc. to see if they have a version of the Kodak Picturemaker machine (I think Walmart's is a Fuji machine? can't recall..).

It's a do-it-yourself machine, you can make copies of photos you already have printed, enlargements, etc. There is a B&W option--try it at the size you want and see what it really looks like.

I can't imagine why you'd get an error msg if you're not doing something like taking a kid's wallet-size school photo and blowing it up to 11x14 or something.
The only thing I can think of: Do the 2 professional photos have a rough "pebbly" matte surface? That might be throwing things off.

I don't know anything about Winkflash. Snapfish did fine by me; you might want to explore Shutterfly and KodakGallery.com, too, to see if they give you the same problem.
annzgw
14 years ago
What was the size of the photos before you changed them to B&W and what is the size after changing them in Microsoft Office?

Also, check and see if Winkflash is resizing them when you upload?
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roobear
14 years ago
Quality is not only photo size but also DPI (Dots or pixels per Inch) which is the Resolution of the photo. It's how many dots or pixels there are per inch in the photo to create the image. The higher the number of dots, the higher the resolution. Web photos are usually low quality 72 DPI, where print quality photos usually have a DPI of 300.

It could be the resolution for the photos is set to web instead of print.
User
Original Author
14 years ago
Pammyfay -I've used the do it yourself machine at walmart before but the line is always huge and since I have so many I need, most of these are on disks and it would take me forever. :( The wait in line is ok if I only need a couple but I figured I'd order these all ones at the same time I needed the other ones for the album/gift. Thought it would be easy!

Hmm.. I don't think the photos look grainy. I have a complete set of the prof. photos (our wedding) and I also have them all on disk with the reprint rights. I loaded the prints to the computer and uploaded them to the program. Took a couple of hours. Which is why I was so hoping Snapfish would pull through so I didn't have to do that again.

Annz - One color photo was 60.3 KB and the same photo changed to b&w is now 62.1 KB. Another in color is 101 KB and the b&w version is 92.8 KB. Should I mention when changing to b&w I also tweaked the contrast and brightness if need be?

Roobear - That sounded important but Chinese to me. haha. How would I change it?
moonshadow
14 years ago
I tend to agree with roobear, it's the resolution.
I don't use Pic Mgr, but found this MS link that says changing resolution is not an option you have. For some reason they removed a lot of options out when they phased in the new photo edit software.

Properties
You cannot explicitly specify the image resolution dots per inch (dpi) or the color depth of images in Picture Manager.

Do you have another photo edit program on your computer? There are some freebies out there you can download if not.
Kathleen McGuire
14 years ago
Do you have a costco near you? It is so easy to do it from home and pick up at your nearest costco. I have a friend that does it all the time with her pics! You just need to create an account. They are very inexpensive too!
User
Original Author
14 years ago
Moonshadow - Thanks! I don't have another program. Can you recommend a good free one?

Kmcg - There isn't a costco near me and I'm not a member. I know I could pay but it probably wouldn't be practical for us.

So the those photos would actually turn out all blah huh?
Shades_of_idaho
14 years ago
I use Irfanview a small free down load on the internet to change the photos and there is an option to set DPI with it. You just need to down load the proper version for your operating system . As I have XP I need the XP version.

It is an easy program to use.

Chris

Ahh.. hall photos. Forget black & white?

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Ahh.. hall photos. Forget black & white?

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