Original file vs. Image on Facebook

[Ninedays9]

What's the difference? If I were to save images that people have posted on facebook and make my own file, will I be able to still print nice 3 by 5 pictures? We've got pictures in the original file on disc from my sister, but some of my friends took pictures that I want to "steal," and I don't want to have to get all the original files. I pretty much only want 3 by 5s because we'll likely only order bigger ones from the professional pictures... of which we will have the original files.

And just to note... I've been looking through the hundreds for pictures to put on here... They are hard decisions to make, haha, there are so many that we both just love. It's making me very excited to get our professional pictures because I probably didn't see a lot of things she got pictures of, so they'll be surprises. Hopefully I'll have some pictures up here soon! :)

[Mrs.Goff]

I used shutterfly.com to print my pictures. They were printed at 4 by 6 and it would tell me if the picture was low quality. The photos I stole from Myspace were all low quality because the files were compressed to fit on Myspace. But they still printed reasonably well.

[WebLady]

If the image you save is sharp and sized for 3x5 then you should be able to print that size with pretty decent quality.

[Ninedays9]

Thanks, ladies!

[Katie-ryn]

Hate to be a bummer, but the images you took of Facebook will not work printed. They will be 72dpi (that's dots or pixels per inch), and for print quality you want 300dpi.

If you tried to print the Facebook pictures they would look very bad. Facebook resizes pictures to about 600 pixels wide, which if it's printed at 72dpi is about 8 and a bit inches wide, but will look blocky and pixelly like if you zoomed in on a picture.

The same picture that is 600 pixels wide printed at 300dpi will look sharp and good but will only be 2 inches wide.

To print a 3x5 picture you need an image that is at least 1500 pixels wide, and 900 pixels high.

So yes, you need the original files.

[Ninedays9]

I printed a few pictures from our computer.. I took a bunch from Facebook and a bunch of the ones that were on the disc from my sister, and they all looked the same. When I print the ones for our album and pay for the prints, I'll have to see if I can get people to send me the files.

[lilmsjess]

idk about facebook, but when my computer crashed, i hijacked alot of my own pics of alex, uploaded them to walgreens.com, and they printed just fine...BUT what i DIDN'T do, was print them myself...when walgreens did it, they were able to stretch the picture correctly, whereas when i try to do it using photoscape, the picture is about half the size it was on myspace, so it only prints a picture that is a tiny bit smaller than a wallet size. and it's VERY hard to see, b/c of the pixels:irked: