Photo Ball Marker - Creating the Sharpest Picture Possible

The Photo Ball Marker picture edit tool is terrific for making it easy for you to upload pictures for your ball markers. You simply select your picture and use the sliders and selection square to select the area of your picture to be used for your Photo Ball Marker.



Our special laser printer prints at a resolution of 600 x 600 dpi. We capture and print a 630 x 630 pixel photo so we have a small buffer when we cut out the one inch diameter circle for your ball marker. We display back a 100 x 100 pixel image (96 dpi) which gives an excellent approximation of what your photo ball marker is going to look like.



After you select a region for your picture, that area is resized into a 630 x 630 pixel picture that is used for printing. Anytime a picture is resized either increasing or decreasing from it's original size some degree of focus is loss in the resizing.



There are two common focus issues when resizing uploaded pictures.



First, a lot of the pictures will be low resolution (96 dpi) and the user selects an area using the selection tool that is much less than 630 x 630 pixels. Our software and printer both make corrections to create the best possible image from the lower resolution picture. But, as each pixel is expanded a slight blurring effect occurs. For most of us, the picture will look fine, but the photographers and graphics people will notice a little blurring.



Second, the digital cameras of today are taking pictures at very high resolutions. This is great if you are printing an 8 x 10 inch photo or a poster. However, it can cause problems when you are printing a one inch photo ball marker. We see selected areas of 2000+ x 2000+ pixels as the large pictures are being uploaded. When this very high resolution selected area is resized by our software and printer a little sharpness is loss. We show this in the image we display back. Again, for most of us this is fine, but the sharp eye can notice the loss of focus. Sometimes, too much resolution is just as bad as too little.



If you do have an eagle eye and want to create the sharpest Photo Ball Marker as possible the secret is very simple. When using the selection tool, select a region of your photo as close to 630 x 630 pixels as possible. To do this you may want to load your image into your own photo editing software and resize it before uploading. The selection tools displays the size of the selection area on the left hand side. The closer to 630 x 630 the sharper the image will be.



Finally, for most of us this resizing isn't even an issue. But, if you are one with an eagle eye, this is the secret to creationg the sharpest picture possible.