Any enthusiastic or pro photographers out there who can help?

[DebiTheScot]

We've just been on holiday to New Zealand and I want to get a photo put on canvas.
My first choice photo is this one which I had thought I'd get split into 3 canvases to go next to each other.
BUT I'm worried that younger ds on the left will go very out of focus when made big and you won't be able to make out his smiley face at all. What do you think?

My second choice (I think) is this one but it's not quite straight. Do you think a canvas company would be able to straighten it without losing any quality?

Thanks for looking, it's stressing me out!

How large a canvas were you thinking of? The size you can enlarge a photo to without losing quality depends on the resolution it was taken at.

I'm certainly no expert but I can't imagine it is difficult to straighten the second picture. I know my cheap photo editing software can do it but I can't comment on what it does to the quality. The naive part of my brain says 'can't it just be printed wonky to make it straight?' !

My gut feeling is that the first one won't retain the crispness you want with your son's face.

Bump.
Anyone else? Thanks Soupdragon. I think you could be right

I like the second one although I would crop out quite a lot of the sky.

Re 2nd image: By straighten, I assume you mean make the horizon horizontal? This can be done very simply, its a function on most/all editing software but you lose some of the outer edges of the image (think about rotating the pic until "straight" then cropping out a rectangle with its edges parallel to the horizon).

Re 1st image: The sharpness of the image will depend on 1) resolution it was taken at (how many megapixels) 2) camera settings (higher ISO will be grainier - shouldn't have been a problem on a bright sunny day though) 3) whether the image was in focus or shaky to begin with. There is software that can sharpen the image to an extent but only really as a minor tweak.

I think both images, esp. the first would benefit from some photoshop type editing to make the image crisper and brighter. Have you tried this yourself? A basic software which will do this is picasa which is available free via google - try using the "I'm feeling lucky" button for the first image - it can be too crude a change but will give you an idea of what can be achieved and is generally good on blue sky shots.

Do you have a local photo printing shop or could you source a smaller independent online printer? My local one will do a nice photoshop tidy up without asking and also let me lean over the counter and "direct" tweaks to colour/crop etc. Good places will be glad to value-add and not just print, my local shop doesn't cost any more to do this.

I would be happy to have a go at editing the images for you just to see what could be achieved. If you're interested PM me and I'll give you the details to email them to me - I love pottering about editing my piccies, even though I'm no photoshop expert.

(Sorry that was sooooolong!)

Herethereandeverywhere- that's be great if you could have a play for me. I've got Picassa but the straightening tool always makes the photos fuzzy.
I've done I'm feeling lucky one 1st one but as you say, it's too harsh, can't remember if the one on fb is before or after I had a play. I don't think I've done anything to it other than make the sky slightly bluer.
It's a 4.75MB photo but I can't remember the other details as I'm on my phone at the moment.