Need Some Help From The Pro's

[bamaman315]

This is kind of hard to ask , but here it goes. I live in Ozark, Al. which is very close to the city of Enterprise , Al. On March 1st there was a EF3 Tornadoe that hit the Enterprise High School and it killed 8 young men and women ages 16 & 17 and 1 elderly lady that was killed when the window she was standing in front of blew out. A co-worker and I would like to build a memorial in honor of these people, we want to be able to carve it in plexi-glass, The problem is I can't get the carvings to come out the way it does in the carve wright website. I am going to post their pictures and if anyone can help us with this, please do. I would also like to say that a couple of fellow union members and I went yesterday to help with the clean up, and what I saw was 10 times worse than what was shown on the news. Please keep these family's in your prayers. This will take a couple of post to get all of their pictures posted and if you would like you can send the results to me at my e-mail woody315@charter.net Thaks so much in advance.

[bamaman315]

here are the last of the photo's

[Greybeard]

Hi Bama.
Just a quick response. The file size of your thumbnails for some are ok, but some are very small.
What you need will relate to the final size of the plexiglas image you're trying to create, but to get any sort of decent repro in your carving, you'll need the biggest file size you can get. I would guess you will need at least 100k for each image to carve at 8" X 6" . Someone else with a m/c may correct me on this.
Do you have these ? If not, can you get them ?

My very best wishes for you in this project.

John

[bamaman315]

Those pictures were taking off the internet and from news paper web sites.
and with all the confuson in Enterprise it is hard tracking down family memebers, we are going to ask for their permission before we do this , I was hoping that if their was any chance of enlarging image from computer or would it make it blurry?or could I just put them on a floppy and take them to wally-world to enlarge do you think that would work?
I just want to be ready when we get the ok. Thanks for any help I can get.

[Greybeard]

I notice that the backgrounds of all the younger ones are the same, so I guess these are school photos ?
Given the ok from the families, presumably the school or the photographer will have the originals/copyright. Contact them, and you should move forward.
John

[bamaman315]

Thanks John we are working that angle too. My friend that is wanting to do this weith me is a friend of the parents of one of the young men that was killed, I will call him later on today and see if he has talked to them yet.

[BobHill]

Bama,

Any chance of contacting the school administrators and tell them of your project and get class photos from them. If they have good photographs (not from the WEB, as those resolution images are too low), then have those photos scanned. Calculate the size of the images you wish to carve and compare that size to the actual size of the individual photo.

For printing a resolution of 300ppi is perfect. for carving, 186ppi is supposed to be perfect. So one should calculate the ratio of the photo to the carving and scan the photos at the ratio number which will make the image that size.

For instance if you have a school photo of 1.5" x 1.5" (really small) and you wish the carving to be 18" x 18", then set the scan resolution to 2400ppi (most of today's scanners will easily do 2400ppi). Now when you enlarge the photo, for each doubling, you halve the resolution. (3.0" becomes 1200ppi, 6.0" becomes 600ppi, 12" becomes 300ppi [best for printing], and 24" becomes 150ppi).

I'll let a math student do the actual calculation if one must, but only the file size is effected from having a higher resolution than one needs. The problem is always from having less resolution than one needs. When enlarging after a high res scan, always have the RESAMPLE option turned OFF.

If this is followed, every detail in the photo will be picked up by the scanner and will translate when enlarged (to the ratio) as detail in either the print or carving with no loss in sharpness over an image originally that size.

Bob Hill
Tampa Florida

[bamaman315]

I think that we are going to have to go through the parents or the school to do this, I did tr to inlarge the photos at wal-mart but I could tell what you were saying about the resolution, best thing about it was the lady in the photo center would not charge me for the pictures because of what happened to kids in enterprise. I am glad to see there are still some people out there who really do care about other people.

Thanks again.
P.S. Bob were you ever in the service ?

[Gary]

Bamaman,

I live North of Chattanooga a few miles, and though I'm not all that experienced with the carvewright, I would be willing to help if you can get good photos to work with. Those same storms passed through here, but fortunately didn't spawn any tornadoes this far north.

Best of luck to ya,

Gary