How do I turn thumbnails into full-resolution photos

either or both would help. I thought the pictures sent from iPhone were full-res but they are too small to be printed. I need to upsize them; or learn how to send full-size photos from iPhone?

The photos taken with the iPhone Camera have a very good resolution, at least the back camera. Only when you zoom in the pixel size will be smaller.

To transfer the full size photos from your iPhone you have several options:

1. Connect the iPhone to a USB port and import directly from the camera roll to iPhoto. That is the quickest way.
2. Use the Photo stream, that will transfer the unedited originals.
3. Share them by Mail, but make sure, you select to send the photo in full resolution.

What do you mean? Do you have thumbnail seized photos with a poor resolution in your iPhoto Library, where you want to increase the pixel size, or do you want to enlarge iPhoto's thumbnails?

You can scale up thumbnails to larger pixel dimensions with apps like Photoshop, Photoshop Elements and GraphicConverter. The resulting image will not be as sharp as the original thumbnail or the actual full sized master but with some experimenting with the resampling/extrapolation settings you can get an acceptable image.

What are the pixel dimensions on the images? Did you take the photos or did you receive them via messages or email on your iPhone?

Do you have the iCloud Photo Library activated on your iPhone?

How are you downloading the photos to your Macbook? If you still have the photos on your iPhone connect it to your Mac, launch Image Capture and download the photos to a folder on the Desktop. That will give you the largest version of the images that is possible.

l f fromsalisbury wrote:

NB what is Photo stream? It may be part of the new 'photos' which I have chosen not to upgrade to - if it something else please could you say where to find item or how to operate it?

My Photo Stream will automatically transfer any new photos taken on your iPhone to your Mac, if you enable it, see:

https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201317

You can use it independently of iCloud Photo Library.

One caveat: if [as I fear] those originals are no longer on the iPhone [my daughter sent them to me] ..is there any way I can now improve their quality?

If the original photos are no longer on your iPhone, export them from iPhoto with these settings in the Export panel.

Which iPhoto version are you using? iPhoto 9.6.1 will not increase the pixel size beyond the actual pixel size of the original, even if you set the custom size to gigantic values. It will just pretend to do it. You will get the best resolution the photo has, and you can then try to enlarge it in Photoshop.