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help with montage/collage please


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Clare99

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I am fairly new to P/shop and am a bit stuck. I am in the process of producing a photo book for my parents 60th wedding anniversary and I want to include a montage of approx 70 photos throughout their marriage. My image size will be 60cm by 30cm and the final jpeg will be inserted into the book via some photobook software provided by the printing company (there are loads of these companies around on the web). FYI I am using P/Shop CS3.

I have created the montage by simply copying the required photos onto my 60 x 30 canvas. When I did the first one, my poor pc struggled to save it. When it finally did, I inserted it into the photobook software but the quality was very poor. The photobook company said it was probably a memory problem with my PC. The file size at this point was approx 12mb.

So, a friend advised me to make copies of all my individual photos then save them at a much lower compression. So I have saved each one at a medium level of 5 and remade my montage. Again, I am still having problems being able to view it within the photobook software. I have spent months on this anniversary book to date and obviously don't want to get it all printed to then find my montage is blurry!

Within photoshop, my montage looks great! Is the photobook company correct in that it is a memory problem with my pc? Is there any way, I can reduce the file size without losing image quality? I have even split the montage into 3 different files (left, middle and right) and it is still blurry (outside photoshop)!

Has anyone else had this problem? Does anyone have any more ideas? I've trawled the web to look for information and there is loads of stuff about how to create a montage but nothing that seems to advise on how the original photos should be compressed/file sizes etc.....!

Thank you in advance for any help anyone can give.

Clare:)
 
what is the resolution of your image? (pixels per inch)

That is a very strange delima... according to my calculations that would be a bout a 24 x 12 inch picture. Very large file if your ppi is the standard 300.. but it shouldn't be more than a couple megabytes.

Check your image size (Image > Image Size). Look in the Document Size box... it should read "Width 60cm, Lgth 30cm, Resolution 300 pixels/inch"
 
Thank you for taking the time to reply.

All the images have been scanned at 300dpi minimum. Some of the old b&w photos have been scanned at 600dpi. All individual images were saved at max compression.

The montage image is indeed 60cm x 30cm as it is to printed across a double page spread of a book measuring 30cm x 30cm. So I agree it is quite big. The file size is around 12mb so it is quite memory hungry! If I save it at medium compression then it will obviously be smaller, but that is also blurry when viewed in the photobook software!

I'm not sure what to do next...any more ideas anyone?

Thanks
 
your photobook software (not familiar with this app) might 'display' images as blurry just to save memory.

Also, I'm not sure about your scanning methods. Did you say you 'compressed' your files when you saved them? If you did, depending upon how you compressed, you might have lost some quality by doing that. All compression is "lossy" (you probably know this though).

Can you do a test print? Or, will the company help you more?

I wouldn't know what else the problem could be, but you could rule out your computer and user error if you could just do a test print.
 
Hello again,

Sorry. I didnt make myself very clear earlier. The "max compression" is actually max quality so no compression at all. The individual photos and the montage itself were saved at maximum quality and therefore huge file sizes.

Your comment about saving computer memory agrees with the info the photobook people told me. This would leave me to believe them. I was loathe to believe them, then get the book printed and then find the montage was blurry.

As the photobook software doesn't allow any test prints, I have copied a small section of my montage as a new image without changing any sizing or compression and found that it looks ok in the photo book software.

I therefore have to assume that it is purely a memory issue when displaying the whole montage.

Many thanks for taking the time out to help me.
 
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