Chicago Tribune | Another shot at how to wring good prints from cell cameras

Last week I offered advice and tricks of the trade to help transform the tiny image files from cell phone cameras into acceptable prints.

I shudda stood in bed, as my grandmother, the late Florence Brennan, used to say when things got dicey.

First of all, I estimated the quality of the best cell images on most new 640 by 480 pixel phones to be 1.2 megapixels when I shudda said 307,300 pixels. Then I opened my e-mail and found that the debate over printing digital images, particularly very small ones, is hotter than a Pentium computer with a broken fan.

So I dug deeper and decided to take a second look at this amazing trend of cell phone cameras and how to make them deliver acceptable printouts.

Aptly enough, the photo-finishing industry's trade group was meeting down in sunny Orlando as I weathered a drizzly Chicago February with a barrage of e-mail from experts and gadflies alike on the best way to get cell phone snapshots into frames and up on the wall.

The traditional photo industry has encountered a painful picture. With the digital revolution, the industry has come to realize that it needs to get people to take their digital files to the drugstore like they once took film.

The Photo Marketing Association International says that one of its best hopes for prosperity is a flood of orders from cell phone picture takers. It hasn't happened yet.

In fact, in its report for 2004, the trade group found the number of prints ordered from cell snapshots was too small to count. Meanwhile, 2004 sales for prints from megapixel (I'm starting to hate that word) cameras totaled 5.1 billion, and the sales for 2005 are forecast at 7.7 billion.

You can download a PDF file of the group's annual report at PMAI.org, and click on Marketing Research.

I'd like to share some of the great new software for fixing up cell phone images that I found while checking out advice from those whose e-mails didn't use words like stupid, dummy and idiot.

The big issue arises when one tries to make sense out of the difference between the dots per inch in a digital image file and the dots per inch on a printer. Monitor screens that measure 1024 by 800 can only display somewhere between 72 and 96 dots (called pixels, of course) per inch. By contrast, even my most vehement critics agree that you need at least 300 dots per inch to produce a usable print.

Cell phone cameras tend to make images at 160 pixels per inch. So we need to increase the resolution of those images into the 300 dpi range.

There are limited resolution enhancements in such standards as Photoshop, Ulead PhotoImpact 10 and Paint Shop Pro 9, but there are much more powerful programs to do this.

Bicubic targets pixels

I downloaded a $29.95 gem called Imagener Enhanced from Kneson Software, at Kneson.com.

The company explains that most commercial programs use a technique called bicubic interpolation to figure out how to add pixels that will increase the resolution. Bicubic compares the pixels immediately adjacent to the one being enlarged and, after a 200 percent to 400 percent enlargement, it starts showing those blocky squares as pixels.

Kneson's so-called Progressive technique, says the company, analyzes pixels well removed from each targeted pixel and then estimates things like how the colors might change based on elements like overall patterns in the image. This fills out the white areas that bicubic leaves with pixels of the color and contrast the pattern indicates.

The results really are impressive on cell camera images of 160 pixels per inch, and they blow one's socks off when applied to a proper image with 3, 4 and 5 million pixels.

Alien Skin doctors images

Another great offering comes from Alien Skin, the popular maker of plug-ins to make Photoshop-type software more robust and creative. Alien Skin's Image Doctor at $129 (www.alienskin.com) is more costly, but it uses a slick technique to make intelligent guesses about how to take a small picture with blocky pixels and make it into something usable. Looked at closely, the Image Doctor fixes appear like a master airbrush artist fixed things up but kept it looking like a proper photograph rather than a painting.

This software does far more in areas such as removing unwanted objects--and relatives--from photos and fixing just about every blemish you can imagine.

Never missing an opening for a buck, Microsoft Corp. has added an automatic Camera Phone Auto Fix wizard to its latest Digital Image Suite 10. It's not in the same league as Kneson or Alien Skin, but it sure is easier. Your images will be fixed with best colors, contrast, etc., but the resolution won't change.

Keep in mind that even the best of these tricks will not match photos taken by high-resolution digital cameras.

As my grandmother said, you can't make a sow's ear out of a silk purse. Or was that a silk purse out of a sow's ear?

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Binary beat readers can participate in the column at chicagotribune.com/askjim, or e-mail jcoates1@aol.com. Snail-mail him in Room 400, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611.