Resizing a photo to 4x6"

[rsherid]

Using Photoshop, I'm trying to resize my large photos to the standard 4x6 inches for printing and then framing. However, once I get it down to 4x6 INCHES, the PIXELS become 432x288 and the filesize dramatically decreases (from megabytes to kilobytes). Then, when viewed at actual size, they're very small. Why is this? How do I get them to be actually 4x6 inches to be printed? Thanks.

 

[hobbbz]

You have to resize the DPI/PPI as well. Although you can't just up the number because it's effectively stretching your image.

A good printed image should be 300 dpi so for a 4x6 it would be 1200x1800 px

 

[run-kmc]

Actually, don't bother setting a dpi. It doesn't matter. You could set it to 1. You could set it to 8 million. Doesn't make a difference. All you need to do is to crop your image to a resolution that is a multiple of 2x3. That could be 200x300 pixels. It could be 1200x1800. It could be 4000x6000. That's the aspect ratio you want.

If you're ordering prints, you're done. If you're printing yourself, you'll have some adjustment to make when you actually go to print.

 

[luminosity]

I just use Capture NX 2, which makes resizing easy.

 

[toxic]

don't bother resizing the image, just make sure it's in the proper aspect ratio. crop if you need to. in this case, you want 3:2. I find software like Lightroom, Capture NX, or Aperture have a better way of doing this than Photoshop.