I haven't played with the software at all to know what they suggest, but I'm guessing that any original image (straight out of the camera) would be fine.
I'm going to set it up for 8.5x11 paper, so it can be printed on ordinary paper. The pictures will probably take up ~half the page, so they'll end up similar in size to a 5x7. So, what resolution is needed to print a quality 5x7? To get 300 dpi I'd need 1536 x 2048 (3 mega pixel). Actual size on disk depends on the colors in the picture.
Also, the pictures need to be landscape, not portrait orientation.
Mantis,
Right off the bat, let say that after doing a few experiments, I don't really know a lot about what I'm talking about as far as pictures and printing is concerned. With that said, let you give some of what I'm looking at.
I have a 5 megapixil camera. The photos I take are in .jpg, which is a compressed file format that give me little over 2 meg jpeg picture. When I open the picture in Adobe Photoshop Elements I have a picture this size: 26.667 inches by 35.556 inches image. 1920 X 2560 pixels at 72 pixels per inch. If I change it to 300 pixels per inch, I get the same size picture but then it's 8000 x 10667 pixels. This give me a image 244.1 meg large.
Now when I change the pixels to 1536 x 2048, I come up with a 9 meg image with a 5.1 in X 6.8 inch image. Which is not that size really. It's much larger in visual size.
Saving the image at maximum jpg, I get 3.2 meg. If I save it in Photoshop, then I get a 9 meg image.
My brain is on fire
, let me give it a rest......
BTW, bamboo is primarily a vertical plant, so horizontal is a little bit more difficult.