Processing Internet Photos- Off topic

[hershon]

Can somebody tell me if a photo on the internet can be processed and developed into say an 8X10" glossy professional photo at a regular photo store, or do you have to send to some speciality place, or can it simply not be done. Specifically, someone was selling some vintage professionally shot (let's assume for points of this post there is no copyright)
photos of various legendary rock groups on Ebay but the price was way out of my range.
As the photo was shown full size obviously via a scan, will a professional photo store be able to reproduce that glossy size looking like a genuine photo? Hope this question makes some sense.

[eisforelectronic]

typically an internet image is going to be a standard 72 dpi. This means that you can get it printed out at 100% image size, any larger and it will show obvious signs of enlargement. Any professional print shop will have software that can reduce those effects somewhat, but you still would not be talking about true photo quality. Of course your results will also depend on quality of the scan. As an image moves through various mediums and sizes some streching and color shift may become evident as well. However, if the image was posted at 8x10 on the internet than you should be able to print it at that size. That's a pretty big image to be uploading though.

Copyright infringement is something you do need to keep in mind. Any reputable print shop is gonna ask questions about the source of the image if it's obviously shot by a professional photographer. At the printshop I used to work at there was no way they would run a print for you if they suspected it wasn't your original image.

[hershon]

Thanks for the info. I'm going to be curious to see if I can get away with this & what it looks like. I would be happy to buy the photos directly, the problem is with these Ebay morons. They bid up the price of a photo the seller either has a master for and can sell endless times or the seller is such a greedy jerk, the price is too high for most people to bid- I'm not begrudging the seller anything but in this/these cases I'm 95% sure he won't get his minimum bid. In this case, he has a previously unpublished photo of Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page & Peter Grant together, around the time Led Zeppelin toured the US at the first time, done by some professional photographer I never heard of & he started the auction at $99. That's way to high for me and apparently most people.

typically an internet image is going to be a standard 72 dpi. This means that you can get it printed out at 100% image size, any larger and it will show obvious signs of enlargement. Any professional print shop will have software that can reduce those effects somewhat, but you still would not be talking about true photo quality. Of course your results will also depend on quality of the scan. As an image moves through various mediums and sizes some streching and color shift may become evident as well. However, if the image was posted at 8x10 on the internet than you should be able to print it at that size. That's a pretty big image to be uploading though.

Copyright infringement is something you do need to keep in mind. Any reputable print shop is gonna ask questions about the source of the image if it's obviously shot by a professional photographer. At the printshop I used to work at there was no way they would run a print for you if they suspected it wasn't your original image.

[hershon]

I lucked out. Right near where I live is a fairly large camera store. They have a machine that prints digital pictures out immediately, any size, on glossy paper, or they will send it out for half the price and the picture will be printed on better glossy stock paper with slightly better resolution. I did both. The guy helped me with the machine, which I can use self service, and he didn't care/ask about what I was doing with photos of jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Brian Jones! It cost me about $10 for each 8X10" instantly done there and the results were very good for my purposes (to be hung up by my autographed photos of rock legends). I'm also as I said sending it back to see of the quality is better and also see if someone asks questions before they process. The bottom line is both of those photos with shipping would have cost me $150 on Ebay and cost me $20 in the store, which for my purposes in that I didn't need or wanted collect an original photo for more than $25 apiece. Yay for technology!

[eisforelectronic]

The people that run those machines are actually supposed to be checking up on that stuff, but if they let you do it, the legality is more their problem. Best of luck with that and have fun.