The original file is 1.7 MB. After cropping the top and bottom it is only 727 KB.
I’ve seen this in a couple other places and I’m curious. Why do people use the size of the file on disk as an indicator of image size? A 700kb JPG could be anywhere from tiny to fairly large depending on image content and compression settings, so quoting the file size is really pretty useless. Why not tell us the actual image dimensions?
The printability of a source image really mostly depends on the typical viewing distance for the picture. If people are going to get up close and bring their magnifying glasses along, you may be out of luck. On the other hand, *normal* people are just going to look at it from a distance where they can see the whole image at once, and luckily for you, that range increases as print size gets bigger, so once you get beyond a certain point (that being the point where a picture can comfortably fill someone’s field of view without going into peripheral vision), you can blow it up as big as you want without taking a hit.
Another crucial factor is the sharpness of the image in the first place. 4 Megapixels does you just about zero good if you’re shooting with some point-and-shoot with a soft lens. It’s they’re 4 *really sharp* megapixels, you should be okay.
I would try to aim for no less than about 72 ppi in your print. To figure out what size that is, divide the pixel dimensions of your image by 72 to get the number of inches on a side. Don’t go bigger than that.
