How Do I Use Custom Photo?

Someone please help me upload photo's from Gimp to White house Custom Color?

• I have been trying to get an account with White House Custom Color (www.whcc.com) and they ask that I upload 5 test prints that are the following specs: 8x10 at 300 ppi embedded with either RGB or sRGB and saved at a lvl 10. I have no issues getting the prints cropped, set at 300 ppi and embedded with RGB/sRGB color space.Where i run into issues is saving the files as a lvl 10 jpg, doing this i lose quality and the photo's come out pixled. The upload can not be over 5 mb, and here lies the problem. I have not been able to figure out a way to save the images at a high enough quality to keep the photos looking nice. If you have been able to upload photos to this company and use GIMP, please do me a favor and let me know how you did it. Thank you to all that reply and are trying to help.

• Answer:

  Level ten is the minimum compression you can apply to a jpeg. Therefore it is the maximum quality you can get. Compression in jpegs does not result in pixelization. When you save an image at this compression level - the result should be more or less the same quality as the original. Therefore you are doing something wrong. Pixelization is caused because your image is too small to be reproduced at that size. Cropping your image might be the cause. For an image to reproduce at 8x10 at 300ppi - your image must be 2400 x 3000 pixels. If it's too small, you will see pixels when you try to print at 8x10. It doesn't matter what you set the PPI to, it's irrelevant. If your image is too small, and you don't have access to anything larger (such as the original file) - then there is nothing you can do in GIMP or any other image editor. Contrary to popular belief, the resolution of a digital image is not it's PPI or DPI, the only thing that matters when printing is the image size in pixels. You need to realise what you think you know about PPI/DPI is a Myth: http://www.rideau-info.com/photos/mythdpi.html