I need help getting best photo quality

Question

Hello,
I need some help for a dedication photo page that I am doing for my son's baseball tribute.  It is a photo page with limited text and will be printed in a directory.  The last time I did this, my photos were very blurry.  I am trying to get the best resolution possible and I'm not sure whether I should use Photoshop or In design.  I currently have the entire cs4 suite.  I sampled the new CC suite several months ago, but like my software I already own, never learned how to use anything.  If you can offer any advice on programs and settings to get me going, I would really appreciate it.
Thanks,
Teressa

Answer 1

When taking a picture with a camera, use the highest resolution possible and if it offers raw format use that instead of jpg. The raw format is just that raw, kind of like a negitive. Nothing is done to it, but provides the highest quality resolution and number of colors. The jpg format, is an edited version in that the settings of the camera dictate what the final image will look like.
Even though for beginners jpg sounds appealing as the camera is doing the work, it also degrades the image. Jpg by nature throws out data to compress the file so that it can be smaller in size. Each time you open and save that jpg file, more data gets throwed out, until the image looks blotchy.
Raw files are non writable. There is no way to over write the data in that file. They use a sperate file called a sidecar file which holds any changes you make to that raw file in camera raw or lightroom.
Once the file opens in photoshop, there is no save as raw file (well there is, but it is not the same as your camera uses) So any edits here in photoshop need to be saved in another format preferable one that is non-destructive when compressing the file, like psd, tiff, png, etc.
Now that the file formats are out of the way, next advice is to keep an eye on the pixel dimentions. The higher the pixel numbers for the width and height, the better the quality will be.
To see the pixel dimentions use the menu Image>Image Size...
Towards the bottom is a check box for resampling the image. With this box checked, you can alter the pixel dimentions. With it unchecked, you can not.
If you reduce the pixel dimentions you are literally throwing in out data. It will no longer exist.
If you increase the pixel dimentions, photoshop trys its best to guess what the data should be to add it.
This is the reason why it is so important to use the highest quality image directly from the camera. As good as photoshop is, it can only be just so good, when you increase the pixel dimentions enough the image will become blurry.
If you reduce the pixel dimentions enough the image will become "pixelated" (It will look like it has a severe case of the jaggies {blocky looking})
So most of the time someone will have an image that does not have enough pixels in the image and the program they print from scales it up to fit a certain area and it will be blurry.
Long story short, it does not matter which program you use, photoshop or InDesign, if the image has enough pixels you will be fine, if not, you will get blurry images.