Reader Sherri Bloom would like pictures bigger than iPhoto seems willing to export. She writes:
I have some pictures in iPhoto that I’d like to export at a size larger than their original size. iPhoto’s Export command seems like it will let me do this when I enter new numbers in the width and height fields but when I check the exported images they’re the same size as the originals. Is there a way to do this?
There is, but not completely within iPhoto.
Assistance comes from my buddy (and Macworld contributor) Ben Long in the form of his Image Resizer AppleScript. You can read the details on how to put it to best use on Ben’s Complete Digital Photography website, but here’s the gist:
Choose an image or group of images, export as TIFF so that the images aren’t recompressed, drop the images on the Image Resizer AppleScript, and enter the desired length (the longest side) for you images. Your images will be resized proportionally and will replace the files that you exported from iPhoto.
Note that if you severely bulk up your images they will lose some of their sharpness. Ben suggests that you can enlarge images quite a bit before the results are prohibitively soft and full of artifacts, but don’t expect miracles should you perform the digital equivalent of pumping 80 pounds of pressure into a tire rated at 25 psi.