Preventing importing of low resolution images?

I'm in process of moving a bucketload of images into a Lightroom library from various sources in the drives of the Macs at gome, and am having problem with Lightroom importing a bunch of low resolution images into the library. These files include various web exports and iPhoto library thumbnails etc. Now, this wouldn't be a problem, except:
1) I have no control over the "Don't import suspected duplicates" feature, so I don't know of Lightroom is importing a thumbnail version of a shot (with EXIF) or the original. I suspect is importing both, but can't be sure, and the import report is just too tedious to go through, as the total size of the import includes over 100k exposures.
2) Lightroom doesn't have a feature that'd let me search for scaled down images. I can't search by resolution, and the scaling flag search doesn't pick up images scaled outside Lightroom. I could throw away some shots with no EXIF data but exports with EXIF information retained cannot be thrown away from the lib.
Anyone here have ideas on how to solve this? A solution that causes Lightroom to ignore files that aren't of the size that's the same as a the camera original, or one that lets me search for resized images from a library would both suffice.

dorin_nicolaescu wrote:
If you are going to judge whether to import or not by file size alone, an easy solution would be to:
Use Windows Explorer (or Mac search) to search you Pictures folder (and subfolders) for files smaller than, say, 300 Kb.
Delete them or move to another folder.
Import the clean folder into Lightroom.
Heh, I guess you missed a detail in my post. I'm importing more than 100.000 exposures contained in a few thousands of folders. The total size of the library that's been imported right now is about 650 GB. If I can't automate this, I can't do it.
I shuffled through the Lightroom plugin API doc and seems I can't create a plugin that'd automate this either, as there's no call to initialize the value from the plugin itself - had an idea to provide a searchable width/height metadata plugin myself but apparently that's a no go.

Similar Messages

Automatic upsampling of low-resolution images?

I posted about this, it might have been about a year ago now, and got no joy, so I thought I'd try again in case something new has appeared.
When exporting to PDF, InDesign CS can downsample images. Some of my images, however, maybe 20-30 at a guess, I need to upsample. In the next month or so I hope to export to PDF, and I dread the thought of having to go through the several hundred images in my book, find those images that are under-resolution, open them in PS, and do some calculations to work out the resolution to which they should be resampled to achieve 300 dpi in the InDesign document... whoa, I'm worn out just thinking about it.
Also on my wish list: I have a hundred or so images that cross the centre-spread boundary. Before I impose the document, I will have to go through it and Copy and Paste-in-Place each image, and then resize the boundary to the centre for both images so that when imposed, some of the image is on one page and some on the other (thanks Buko, for that hint from a few years ago). Not a great problem, but still... can this process be automated?
Bring joy to my heart, someone please, and tell me at least one of these chores is automatable.

ROBERT LEVINE: "Never saw that happen". You can see it happen, and I explain how to make it happen, in my downloadable zip file.
ROB DAY: Thanks for the feedback. The sample I generated (not a typical photo I work with; I choose it because it did not have any inherent imperfections) is an accurate reflection of how I use some of my images. i.e I start with a low resolution original and it is scaled in InDesign. I do not have the option of getting a better original. Most of the images I have are 2 x 3 Box Brownies from pre 1960, obtained by me driving from Tasmania to North Queensland (3000 km) each year for four years and scanning an elderly stranger's photos on their lounge room floor. In the two-three hours I was with them I had to get their life story, look at their photos, choose the interesting ones, write down the details, and then scan them. It's a challenge to do all that, day after day, 6-8 people a week, for three months at a time. Given 10-50 photos to scan, which at high resolution take three minutes each on my scanner, sometimes they couldn't all be scanned in high resolution in the time I had available. The most likely prospects for the book I did scan at high resolution, the others got the 300 or 600 dpi treatment (this is for a 2 inch wide image, remember). Three years later, when I started putting the book together, I choose to use some of the low scan originals, greatly enlarged, because they were important photos that I didn't realize at the time of scanning.
So, I'm stuck with some low-resolution scans and I want to make them look their best. Upscaling does that, doesn't it? And your example proves it.The choice between the middle and right photo is easy: the one on the right. i.e the upscaled unpixelated one. And I wasn't the judge: I let my partner decide (it's her niece in the photo). It's a game man who would argue with my partner.
Further, the image on the left, your reference and which is quite acceptable, is of course taken from my 300 dpi PDF -- itself an upscaled version of a 30 dpi image. So the reference you choose again proves that upscaling works. i.e it removes pixelation and is beneficial.
Please everyone - this is not about using a low resolution image because I'm too lazy to rescan the original. In most cases the originals are now scattered among children and grandchildren of the person I spoke with because they have passed away. Plus, if I did locate the photos, they are 3000 km away. I have some low resolution images and I want to improve them. Upscaling does that, InDesign can't, and I think it should.
MORE ON David's remarks: Excellent tutorial, David. Pity I wasted 20 minutes to unnecessarily generate mine.
I'd like to know the reasons why InDesign doesn't simply offer a 'Resample' option instead of only 'Downsample'. If a particular printer requires 300 dpi images for best quality, InDesign should accommodate that by allowing a user to resample every image to 300 dpi. I reckon the programers never gave thought to the idea that someone might be using low-resolution images in a flash piece of software.
This thread has gone a bit astray. Buko has given an indirect answer (to do what I thought I would have to do) -- use Photoshop. Can I take it that no version of InDesign, or any add on, allows for automatic upsampling?
InDesign has the ability to resample, and I bet it uses the same algorithms as Photoshop which can resample both ways. InDesign can resample downwards; it is unfortunate that it wasn't given the capability to resample upwards.

Downloads Low resolution images and not the high resolution as it did in 08

'm using iPhoto '09 , unfortunately iPhoto only downloads the low res images and not the high resolution images. This makes it pretty much worthless, since the low resolution images are really bad in iPhoto. There was not any problems with Iphoto in the past Thank You

What do you mean by "downloading"? There are a couple of ways to get image file out of iPhoto:
1 - select the thumbnails and drag them to the desktop. This will give you copies of the latest version of each photo.
2 - select the thumbnails, use the File->Export->File Export menu option. Depending on how you configure the export you will get the original, the latest version and/or a reduced size copy that you determine.
3 - select thumbnails and use the Share->Send to DVD. This produces a mini library of the photos you've selected which include the original files, thumbnail files and any modified/edited file. This method is intended for use on computers that are running iPhoto.
Which method are you using?

Clips Importing in Low Resolution

I've done some screen-capture tutorial movies which look fine as Quicktime .mov files (880x660) but look very blurry after importing into iMovie. I've never tried iMovie until now, but it seems all the preferences are set to best quality and I'm unable to determine what's causing the poor resolution.
I'm missing something.
PowerBook G4 Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Perhaps your problem is in how you made the screen captures. I use Snapz Pro X and get good results - what did YOU use?
By the way, you must kep in mind that video (640x480) is low resolution by today's computer monitor terms (1280x1024 or higher). What are you trying to capture?
Edit: Also, keep in mind the the preview image shown in iMovie is NOT 'full quality' - it's just a preview of the content.
F Shippey

Import Previews Low Resolution?

As an Event Photographer I need to be able to quickly preview images from my Cards, Import only the "GOOD" images and transmit these for immediate distribution.
Problem is the PREVIEW of the images PRIOR to import are very low resolution and don't allow me to make an informed decision as to the quality of the image. Can this be adjusted?
Also, any tips on speeding up importation would be appreciated.
I've disabled FACES and PLACES and use a high speed FW800 card reader.

I can't see how you could make a select in the camera but you can't make it with the camera-generated preview? Especially when the in-camera JPEG is what's displayed on the back of the LCD when you review images (All RAW files contain JPEG previews for this purpose, and the histogram is typically displayed using the info from this embedded JPEG preview).
The fastest thing you can do for selections is to click Aperture's checkbox to use the embedded JPEG if possible. Then turn on quick preview mode and get to work editing. Note, Aperture 3 lets you edit while you're importing. It doesn't matter if the images are still on the card or have been copied to their final location. If the JPEG on the camera is good enough for quick reviewing, it should be good enough on screen... even if it is at a small resolution.

Sharing Indesign on CC show low-resolution images and not the right font in preview

Dear Adobe,
I really want to make use of CC Files and the sharing ability with my clients. I have shared an Indesign file, whereas all the links in that indesign file are on CC Files too. The font is a regular Futura Std. But both the links in the files (background and logo) and the font used are not showing up correctly. I deleted the file and uploaded it again, but it is still showing a bad preview. This is not something I can share with my clients.
Am I doing something wrong? It appears that another Illustrator file is showing its preview in low-resolution and after 2 seconden it renders it at a higher resolution.
Regards,
Daniel

Fonts may not and links will not show up correctly in the image preview on the Files page. The preview being created on the server is not able to access the links, and only the default fonts are available.
You can export a PDF and share this with your clients (and you can always include a link to the InDesign files if the clients need to download them).

Low resolution images over dialup

For some strange reason, Safari seems to render images at a lower resolution when I'm connected to the Internet over dialup (Bluetooth dialup in my case, haven't tried regular dialup), no matter what my Display preferences are set to.
I've seen a couple prior posts asking similar questions, but no definite resolution. One person mentioned the "Total Access" features and a web accelerator perhaps being the cause, but I can't find anything like that either in the Safari or System preferences.
Help?

This is normal
An image requires a picture of twice the resolution to display properly on a Retina display, if not available it will double up the pixels or just stretch out to fill the space it should fill. Most websites were created before high resolution displays became popular and many either haven't bothered or just do not feel enough visitors use such displays to make updating their images worthwhile
When a non-Retina user loads a page with such images they still have to download the full size image, which could be another reason
As for program icons it will just be that the program is old

Low resolution images in .pdf from PowerPoint

I have Acrobat Professional 7.0.3, and MS PowerPoint 2003 SP3. When I convert a presentation into PDF that looks good in PowerPoint, and prints fine from PowerPoint, my image resolution drops and looks awful. It doesn't matter if I use "high quality print," or "press quality." No matter what I do, the images don't look good. These are high resolution images, so that's not the problem.
Thanks for your help!
BHB

I think so. PowerPoint has a menu item called "Adobe PDF." There are four options, one is "change conversion settings." In that window I set the "conversion settings" to "high quality print." Then I select "Adobe PDF" in PowerPoint again, and this time click on "convert to Adobe PDF." Then a small window called "Acrobat PDFMaker" pops up and does the conversion. The resulting PDF file opens in Acrobat Professional.

Low resolution image comes in larger when imported into high res file?

In CS5, I have a postcard I'm designing at 355 PPI with a width of 2174 px and a height of 1553 px.
I dragged an image on top of the file straight from the desktop that is 72PPI with a width of 300 px and a height of 214 px, and it seems to display a lot larger than I anticipated, and it does not seem very soft or pixelated after import.
1. Why does it come in at a larger size?
2. If I use a Transform Tool to shrink it down, will it print nicely at a smaller size even though it was only 72 PPI?
Thanks.

In the Preferences under General, there is a check box that says...
Resize Image During Paste/Place. What is it set to?

Low resolution images displayed on Android phone

I'm testing some animation on a Samsung Note 3 and some of the svg images are coming out blurry.
Not all of them, only a few. When I pinch zoom, the images fix themselves and pop to being perfectly crisp.
Below is what it looks like before the pinch zoom. This only happens on some of the images. Not all. And it works fine in a windows browser, and on an iPhone.
Only issue at the moment is on my android note 3.

After a bit more playing,
When I scale up an SVG image from say 0%, the image retains the resolution of what is was at 0%.
So when it hits the final scale of 100%, it's very blurry.
Maybe there's a setting to make svg images act like infinitely scalable vector graphics within edge?

Identify low-resolution images

Since a certain resolution is necessary to gain fullscreen size in slideshows, i'd like to find a way to identify those images with lightroom, which don't have sufficient scale. Is there a way in LR to find/mark/sort them? Because I haven't found one..

Go to collections and click on the plus icon and choose create smart collection.
Then set your preferred criteria e.g. megapixels or dimensions.
Do that by clicking the dropdown menu on the left and choosing size and then one of the size criteria applicable.
N.B rather than filtering out images that you don’t need try filtering for the ones that match your required size, for example:
Long Edge Uncropped >> is greater than >> 1920

How can i get low resolution pictures to print

I just bought a office jet pro 8600 and got on hp e-print for the sole purpose of printing pictures off of my iphone and ipad. I just sent an e-mail to the printer and it only printed "sent from iphone." It says there is some technology preventing printing of low resolution images... usually from camera phones. Any ideas or help.
Thx

Hi DChip56,
Here are some printing tips for printing from your iPad and iPhone (particularly items in bold):
All photos e-mailed with HP ePrint will print at a default size of 4 x 6 inches (101.6 x 152.4 mm).
If your HP ePrint-enabled printer does not have a separate photo paper tray, just make sure that photo paper is the only paper loaded in the tray when printing photos.
Make sure your digital images have a high enough resolution, or dpi (dots per inch). Image files (like jpeg, bmp, tiff, etc.) need to be at least 100 dpi in order to print via HP ePrint.
Make sure your image attachments are smaller than the 5 MB (megabyte) limit.
If you send a photo that is less than 100 dpi, it will not be printed. Instead, you will see a message in your job history on the ePrintCenter that says “Failed”.
To print a photo or image that is less than 100 dpi, insert the image file into a Word document before e-mailing. Your image will be printed on paper from the main printer paper tray.
If I have helped in any way, just click the Kudos star on the left. Also, if your issue has been resolved, don't forget to select Accept as Solution

High resolution PDF still generates low resolution drop shadows?

I have created a series of print ads in InDesign CS5.5 to be run in magazines, and at the bottom of the page is the company's logo, with a drop shadow applied to it within InDesign. Nothing strange there. Upon exporting the PDF, I use the Press Quality settings which by default are made to create 300 dpi PDFs. The only changes I make in the settings is adding bleed and crop marks, I don't change anything that could affect the resolution or transparency settings. But still, the magazine's print-technician always replies that the shadows in my document have a low resolution.
Up until now I have told him to not worry and run it anyway, and the results have been fine - I haven't noticed any problems with the quality of the print in the magazine. But it really annoys me that I keep getting these error messages - I want to create perfect PDFs! Why on earth are my shadows ending up as low resolution images?
The only thing I can imagine might be a sign of an issue is under the Advanced-tab in my Export-settings. The Transparency Flattener section (which I, to be honest, am not quite sure what it is) is set to medium resolution, and is greyed out - meaning I can't change it to high resolution. Could this be what is causing it? And if so, how do I fix it?

I don't spend a lot of time with Acrobat's preflight, but it looks like it assumes what the flattener preset will be at output even though it could be anything.
The default Press Quality preset exports live transparency with the flattener grayed out as Medium and it looks like Acrobat preflight considers that even though nothing has been flattened yet. So, here I've made a 3" sqaure box and exported it with Press Quality and prefilght tells me it's roughly 200ppi (which by the way is plenty for a dropshadow):
If I change the preset to High (set the Compatibility to 1.3, which lets you set the flattener to High, then reset compatibility to 1.4):
Then Acrobat's preflight tells me the shadow will have more resolution:

Low resolution warning with 8Mpixel image?

I've finished a new large size hardcover book, and some of the full page size (landscape) images with have 8 megapixel raw files as sources have low resolution warnings - some, but not all of them. Some of the photos have been edited in photoshop, and none of these have warnings. With the unedited pics, some have warnings, some don't - there doesn't seem to be any specific reason why some of the files have warnings. I haven't tried to actually buy the book, so I don't know what will happen with ordering. But it seems 8 megapixels should be fine for a large book landscape page.

Limnidytis:
What size book and theme are you using? I'm not familiar with the RAW files but remember reading about there's a couple of files that get uploaded, the raw file and a jpg for viewing - something like that. Check and make sure it's the RAW file that's in the book and not the jpg file for viewing. Click on one of the files in the book and type Command-I to bring up the Info window for it. There you'll see the image size size in pixels and file size in KB or MB. As I said I'm not familiar with those files so may be way off on this.
As far as resolution is concerned its the overall pixel dimensions of the file that are important. For example a 3512 x 2338 pixel file will have a resolution of about 585 dpi for a 4 x 6 print. If you expand that to an 8 x 12 print (so we dont have to crop) the resolution will drop to about 292.
A 3512 x 2338 file will give approximately a resolution of 275 if printed at an 8.5 x 11 size or approximately a full page photo in a large book. 275 is sufficient for that size print.
iPhoto will often report the dpi at 72 but the size its looking at may be somewhere around 48 inches for the larger side. This can be seen if you have an editor like Photoshop Elements where you can go in and change the dpi and pixels on a side and see how the size in inches changes.
OT

Slideshow - stretched image + low resolution

Hi guys,
I have a wide screen that runs at 1440x900. I have my slideshows configured not to "scale image to fit screen" as my images are in 4:3 aspect and scaling it to fit the wide screen makes everyone look fat...
Viewing a quick slideshow from Finder or Preview works correctly, i.e. the photo fits in the screen's hight, with black down the sides.
When I start a slide show in iPhoto (6 and 08), it switches down to 1280x800, and seems to ignore the "scale image to fit screen" setting being set to "off" - so the images are all stretched sideways.
I suspected at first that it might be a video RAM issue, but the G4 Mini has 32MB dedicated video RAM, and the slideshow works fine (without switching to a lower resolution) in Finder and Preview.
I found one other post, posted in the iPhoto 5 section, with no responses:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=5155628&#5155628
Is anyone else seeing this? Is there a way to force iPhoto to leave the resolution alone and obey my scaling wishes?
Thanks

koffiejunkie:
Welcome to the Apple Discussions. The three options I have for format are: Current display, 4:3 (iDVD, TV) and Widescreen 16:9. The 4:3 option puts black bars on either side and pins the height. The 16:9 option put black all around the image. Do either of these work for you?
Try deleting the iPhoto preference file, com.apple.iPhoto.plist, that resides in your User/Library/Preferences folder. Launch iPhoto, reset the preferences and try again.
Do you Twango?
TIP: For insurance against the iPhoto database corruption that many users have experienced I recommend making a backup copy of the Library6.iPhoto database file and keep it current. If problems crop up where iPhoto suddenly can't see any photos or thinks there are no photos in the library, replacing the working Library6.iPhoto file with the backup will often get the library back. By keeping it current I mean backup after each import and/or any serious editing or work on books, slideshows, calendars, cards, etc. That insures that if a problem pops up and you do need to replace the database file, you'll retain all those efforts. It doesn't take long to make the backup and it's good insurance.
I've created an Automator workflow application (requires Tiger), iPhoto dB File Backup, that will copy the selected Library6.iPhoto file from your iPhoto Library folder to the Pictures folder, replacing any previous version of it. It's compatible with iPhoto 08 libraries. iPhoto does not have to be closed to run the application, just idle. You can download it at Toad's Cellar. Be sure to read the Read Me pdf file.

Preventing importing of low resolution images?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for