Photography: Resizing Images?

I'm a photographer, and I shoot with a Nikon D800. I use Lightroom 4 and I put all of my clients images on a disc for them. I don't know anything about resizing images before I put them on a disc, or what I should resize them to. I've had several clients tell me the images looked fine on their computer, but were blurry when they went to print them out. I've told All my clients to go to www.mpix.com but some refused and went about their business and printed them out at Walmart, CVS, etc. After I explained to them about how places like that can mess with the quality of the photo. Anyway, my question is, what should the image sizes be when you put them on a disc, and also when you put them on Facebook?

First of all, you truly need to totally change your business mode. YOU should be doing the supplying of All prints to clients, … Not, instead, being a producer of cheap plastic. If YOU control the printing, you will never have this kind of problem AND you will get the income you SHOULD be getting from print sales. Simply where your customers are getting prints done is only half the problem. Just wait until you see one of your photos printed out onto which they have "edited" it with idiotic software "effects".

If you give anything at all on a disc, or put on a site such as Facebook, it should be ONLY small, low resolution proof type images with a watermark over the center that can't be removed without ruining the photo. The size of the photo should be no more than about 600 pixels on the longest side, at a resolution of 72 PPI and a JPEG compression of 5. They will still look fine on the computer, but will not be printable.

If your clients are printing out the images at Walmart or CVS they should know that they won't get good quality images. What size images to have depends on the use. If you want high quality images, then the bigger the size the better. If on the other hand, you are posting to a place like facebook or the internet where people can steal your images, I would recommend a low resolution so that even if they steal them they can't print them out very big without them being very pixelated. If you want to control the quality of the prints you should not give the clients the disk and instead have them printed out for them, that way you can be assured they will only get high quality images.

A professional photographer that doesn't supply quality prints, nor know how to resize digital images? I'm sorry, I rarely respond rudely, but I'm gobsmacked. It's like having a professional dentist that doesn't know what a molar is.

Having a D800 and Lightroom 4 doesn't make you a photographer…

Knowing how to use them does… And if you knew exactly how to use them you wouldn't be asking this question… It is basic stuff.

Steve P answers your question… I just take offence to people that have great equipment and don't have a grasp of the basic stuff that's involved throughout the photographic process… I have over 35 years experience in photography and have been experimenting with digital for around 10 years, if you don't know how to manage image sizes you shouldn't be asking people to pay for your services.

There's an option in lightroom to set the size of the copies you are sending to your clients

http://aviewfinderdarkly.com.au/2012/10/03/exporting-digital-photos-from-adobe-lightroom/