Complicated maths problem (for me)

I hope someone might be able to help me with a 'complicated' problem involving multiplication, because I am lost
(I never was any good with numbers - maths does my head in!)

I've got some blank fridge magnets and key ring holders and I want to make paintings to fit into them,
Here's a picture of them :-



... but I can't paint lots of tiny pictures, so I want to paint one big one that I can scan into my computer,
then I'll be able to reduce its size to fit the blank key ring holders and fridge magnets,
and print off a page-full of them, cut them out and place in the blank holders.

I hope I've put it clear enough that it makes.

Now the problem I have is what size do I paint the big painting ?

The blank fridge magnet holders are 3.5 cm x 5 cm
So if I multiply those numbers by 6 and paint a picture 17.5 cm x 30 cm (on A4 paper) and reduce its size on the computer to fit the blank holder, would it still be in proportion ? or would it look distorted ?

The blank keyring holders are 2.8 cm x 4.1 cm
so if I multiply those numbers by 7 and painted a picture 19.6 cm x 28.7 cm (on A4 paper) and reduce its size in the computer to fit the blank holder, would it still be in proportion ? or would it look distorted ?

I would be grateful for any help with working this out ... thanks

 

We would not worry about such detail

If you use a good editor you can resize an image as you want , for example here is the resizing panel the FastStone free photo /image viewer/editor where you have a varierty of sizing methods including maintaining the aspect ratio.

What would be more of a concern is how effectively your printer will deal with such a reduced image.
Worth trying it out on some existing images to see how good the print quality is at such a small size, you might find you have to edit your original work to give a good effect.

 

To me this is not a maths problem, its something else.
But dont ask me what.

 

A lot of photo apps can toggle between percentage and target size when scaling. I'd just let the software take care of it.

I would advise that you scan it at the highest possible resolution, as some quality reduction is inevitable when you scale it, because the scaling process is in effect having to throw away a lot of pixels.

 

Can you make a mock up with a photo or googled image? Paste it into whatever programme you are using, if necessary crop to correct proportion and print out the "mother picture" to give you the size you want your painting to be.

Then experiment in re-sizing the electronic "mother picture" and copy and paste the "babies" side by side to fill the screen. Print and check.

When re-sizing, it's important to keep the ratio (usually that's default setting, if not, there should be a box to tick). So if you make the picture shorter, the width will automatically follow the reduction rather than leaving you with very short and fat version of the original.

What software are you going to use? Microsoft Word is perfectly good for jobs like this, sometimes you need to play with "fit"- setting to get the small pictures side by side though.

Most importantly, @Michael Hewett , what are you painting? Sounds like a lovely project

 

I have scaled photographs down to use in keyrings with no issues. They printed perfectly acceptably. Let's face it, our avatars here are of acceptable quality.

 

Thanks for all your help.
I don't know what 'software' is but I know how to reduce the size of an image to the size of the blank holders.
What I wanted to know was if doing it the way I describe would distorted the picture.

Never mind, I'll do a few trials to see how it comes out.

It won't make any difference to the quality of the photo, I have reduced pictures to fit coasters, making them much smaller than the original, and in fact they look better after reducing because it is more difficult to see mistakes.
The coasters are square so it's easy to reduce the size.

Thank you

P.S. @Selleri I am going to paint several pictures. I have chosen some animals and some flowers.
I'll show them after I've done them.

 

If you get stuck, please send me a private message and I can try to play around to try bits and bobs. I'm not an expert at all but willing to try

"Software" just means the programme you are using on your computer, it's the opposite of "hardware" that is the tangible physical items in your computer. Microsoft Word is software (it's a programme), the leccie metallic bit inside your computer that does the physical job of moving the bytes about is "hardware". I think....

What are you painting?

 

If you reduce both dimensions by the same factor the images will not distort.

 

Well, Shiney, I didn't want to be the first to mention that.
Luckily my avatar shows my furry ears and wet nose off to a tee

 

Thanks @Selleri you are kind, I'll see how it goes.
Thanks for the explanation also.
The first picture I'm going to do is a Daffodil for a good neighbour. She asked for a Daffodil.
And I'm doing a birthday card for a friend, with a wolf on it, because she likes them.
Then I'm going to do a few more flowers, Snowdrops and Crocuses, for more keyrings because I have a few birthdays coming up in the spring.

Thanks @Jocko, so if I multiply the dimensions of the key ring by 6, to make it fit on an A4 sheet, and then reduce them to the original dimensions, the picture will not look distorted, I believe that would be correct and that's really what I wanted to know.