Will your photos be sharp enough for a photo book?
Photos from a recent iPhone are sharp enough for a full page in a photo book. Here's what makes a photo print sharp, and what to avoid.
What makes a photo sharp in print?
A photo is made up of pixels, and paper needs far more pixels per centimetre than a screen does. Printers usually work on around 300 pixels per inch, or roughly 120 pixels per centimetre, for a completely sharp print.
Even a 12-megapixel photo, the kind iPhones have taken for many years, is about 4000 × 3000 pixels. That’s plenty for a full page in a medium book, and enough for a full page in the large one. So photos from a recent iPhone are sharp enough to fill a page.
The app tells you
When you edit a photo, the app shows how sharp it will be in print. If a photo is too small for its space, you have two options:
- make the photo smaller on the page;
- choose a layout with more photos, so each one takes up less room.
What can make a photo blurry
- Cropping. If you zoom a long way into a photo, you only use a small part of its pixels.
- Digital zoom. If you zoomed in when you took the photo, it has already lost sharpness.
- Photos from messages and social media. Photos you’ve been sent in a message or saved from social media have often been made smaller along the way. Find the original in the photo library of the person who took it.
- Screenshots. A screenshot is only the size of the screen.
- Shaky photos. A blurry photo doesn’t get any sharper by being printed. It can still work at a small size, though, for example in a grid.
Photos in iCloud
If you’ve turned on Optimise iPhone Storage, only small versions of your photos are kept on your phone. That’s fine: the app fetches the full-size photo from iCloud when it needs it. Your phone just needs to be online.
Colours and light on paper
A screen gives off light, and paper doesn’t. That’s why printed photos often look a little darker and softer than they do on your phone. Very dark photos get darker on paper, so go for the brighter ones, and leave out any where faces disappear into shadow.
The books are printed on 170 g silk paper, which gives deep colours.
Keep faces and text away from the edge
When a photo runs right to the edge of the page, the printer trims off a few millimetres so there are no white lines. So keep faces and text a little way in from the edge.
Ready to give it a try? Read How to make a photo book on your iPhone.