Resize image before printing or scale to fit??

[stevem38895022]

I have an opportunity to sell some photos (for beer money only).
I am using a standard presentation with a boxed image area with image clipped to the box and a Text label below. There is sufficient resolution to print at A3 poster size.

Basically, I am asking the customer what size print they want and creating a blank template to that size, bringing the image across and then transforming the image to suit the boxed area. So for an A4 image, I create a blank A4 canvas, create a boxed area and drag image in and adjust. similarly for an A2 and A3, I create blank canvasses of that size and repeat as above. So in each case the image is scaled to suit the box size.

My question is this: Can I create an A3 template and simply advise the customer to "print at A4" for instance?
Is there a difference between tranfroming the image in Photoshop  to A4 size and scaling the image to A4 at the print stage? This second point is simply "shrink to fit" or equivalent, I assume.

Thanks

Steve

[Bojan Živković · Accepted solution]

In any case Photoshop must use interpolation method. If you set it to Automatic then you should not see much difference (if any) between scaling only image or entire document to match image dimensions.

[stevem38895022]

Thank you.

It is easier to make one image and resize/rescale after for printing, rather than three different ones so I  will go with that.

Steve

[Bojan Živković · Accepted solution]

Use PSD and always scale only once. Do not save as JPG then open> scale > Save that will ruin quality.

Open PSD with image inside Smart Object > duplicate > scale > save or print.

If you must send them ready made for print or to avoid potential mistake then do it yourself.

[stevem38895022]

Thanks, the more I think about, the easist way is to create a PSD original at A1.

Then if someone want A3 for instance, then scale within Photoshop, PSD to PSD, then export as JPG

[Bojan Živković]

Yes, create document and place image which will be inside Smart Object. If you want smaller dimensions then use Image > Duplicate > Image Size > Save. While your image is inside Smart Object layer it will be always scaled only once on every change of dimensions. Even if you downsample original document then Undo changes and even if you resample original document multiple times and revert to original. If you scale multiple times document without pixel data inside Smart Object that will resample multiple times what is not good option.