reducing a photograph to scale

[landman]

How do you go about reducing a photograph so the image will print to a pre-determined size? For example I'd like to print this dash so the actual image is 2 1/8" to use it in a model.

[Harry P.]

Just about any software program lets you size images. Just open a new file in the program of your choice (Phoroshop, Paintshop Pro, Illustrator, InDesign, Word... whatever) at letter size, import the image, and use the rulers in the program as a guide to scale the image to the size you want it to print (by dragging the corner of the image or the image bounding box).

You can fit several images onto the page... do one as close to the size you want as possible, then just to cover yourself, add several more, a few slightly smaller and a few slightly bigger... and print. One of them will undoubtedly be just the right size.

[landman]

Thanks Harry.

[my66s55]

Gimp will do it and Gimp is free. First, you will need to level it and crop it so that it fits side to side. Open file, image. print to size and adjust it to the width you want. print it out. I've used this successfuly many times.

[Art Anderson]

Irfanview is also a free photo-editing program--which I've used for years now. Their photo resizing is very easy to use--just know the size you want in either decimals of an inch or metric!

Art

[Bernard Kron]

One thing to watch out for is the perspective of the photo you are using. In the example you show, the dashboard was not photographed straight on, but rather at an angle with the right side closer to the camera than the left. In this case the difference isn't much and you could use a known dimension, such as one of the gauges, to judge how much to reduce it if you wanted an accurate scale reproduction. But you would have to distort the image to pull the left side forward slightly. You can do that in most of the photo editors mentioned above.