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Discussions about cameras, lenses, accessories, and image-processing.
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Seeking tips for enlarging images for printing 5 years 6 months ago #1902

  • Con Boekel
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I have been invited to participate in a commercial art exhibition. This means that for the first time I will be printing and enlarging some of my bird images. So, I am a complete newbie in this area. I would appreciate any advice that people might have. I am particularly concerned to understand the technical limits to enlargement and any tips for how best to enlarge images while maintaining sharpness for printing. I routinely use DPP4, PSE 13 and Neat Image.

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Seeking tips for enlarging images for printing 5 years 6 months ago #1903

  • Ian Wilson
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Hello Con,
I do not have hands-on experience with making large prints but what I do know is that there are some software packages available to interpolate between pixels to 'fill in the gaps' when you need to blow up an image to a very large size. I have seen discussions of the effectiveness of various software but unfortunately I don't remember the names of the software. However, I think you would have no trouble finding this information with a simple Google search.
Cheers, Ian
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Seeking tips for enlarging images for printing 5 years 6 months ago #1904

  • Glenn Pure
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Hi Con

Congratulations on getting into an exhibition. The answer to your question is that "It depends"! For normal prints, it's usual to print at a resolution of 300 pixels per inch in the old imperial measure still used by printing houses. You should be able to work out from this whether your final print size is going to exceed the original size of your image (after cropping). So if you had a starting image of 3000 (h) x 4500 (w) in pixels, this would enlarge to 10 x 15 inches at 300 pixels per inch. Going larger means you will have to upscale the original image as intimated in your original request and as per Ian's response. I have done this in the past for quite large prints (40 inches on the longest side) with very good results just by using the resize facility in Photoshop Elements. As Ian suggests, better results may be possible with specific software for this but I was very happy with the results from PSE. Bear in mind also that larger prints are generally designed to be viewed from further away. Hence any impact on image quality from upscaling will be less apparent. In my experience though, the quality impact from even large upscaling is not very noticeable at close range. A few things you should do when going through the process:

1. Ensure you always work on the TIFF or an uncompressed file. Do not attempt to upscale after jpg conversion. Quality will suffer a lot more
2. In general, prints (which are referred to as images on reflected media, as opposed to images viewed on screen ie with transmitted light) have much lower dynamic range and detail in shadows will be harder to see. Also reflected media images usually look duller, and slightly darker again if framed behind glass/perspex. It's therefore usually a good idea to adjust image brightness slightly higher compared to what looks right on screen.
3. Consequent to point 2, unless your computer screen is calibrated, you will get quite unpredictable results from prints in both brightness and colour. It's critical to calibrate your monitor to get predictable results.
4. The second part to this is that the printing business should have regularly calibrated printers. These days, I think most are pretty good, even in places like BigW. However, in the past I've used a professional photographic printer (RGB digital in Brisbane). Their prices are actually better than many consumer printing houses and they courier. They will also do other print types such as inkjet in addition to standard colour photographs (Type C) prints. They will also do prints on special media such as aluminium etc. (www.rgbdigital.com.au). RGB digital recommends uploading jobs at 300 ppi and ensure the images are in sRGB colour space or the results you get back are likely to look a different colour to what you see on screen (even with a calibrated monitor). I found out the hard way once after ordering some monochrome prints that weren't in sRGB and had a nasty colour cast as a result.

Finally, before ordering in bulk, it would be a good idea to order a test print or two to check the results and compare to what you are seeing on screen.
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Seeking tips for enlarging images for printing 5 years 6 months ago #1905

  • David Newell
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Con,
I agree with Glen's comments. I differ slightly in that I normally compose my images using 240 dpi before printing - normally at A4. The occasional print I do at A2 generally needs to be up scaled which I do within the print facility of Lightroom. The other point that I would make is that my rule of thumb for cropping is to a minimum size of 1920x1080 for the RAW image before converting to a 1920x1080 jpeg (based on the fact that this as this was the resolution of my TV which is what I mostly view my photos on). I recently upgraded the TV which now has a resolution of 3840x2160 and I do not notice the difference when watching the slideshows. My point - check your images at home on your TV once you have done the required scaling.

Need also to reinforce Glen's comment with respect to a sample print on the same paper type (a smaller size does not matter) from a commercial printer to check the colour calibration of their process. It can and does vary significantly. I print at home and have a calibrated monitor and printer. The last two years I printed family calendars at a commercial printer and while looked at in isolation they were ok, the colours differed significantly from my home results. This year I decided I would spend the time and print at home.
All the best
David
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Last edit: by David Newell.

Seeking tips for enlarging images for printing 5 years 6 months ago #1907

  • Glenn Pure
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As for the best output resolution for printing, it's best to go with what the commercial printer recommends (which would usually be the native resolution of the printing equipment). Otherwise, the image is rescaled again by the printer's software when the job is processed. Best to avoid that.
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Seeking tips for enlarging images for printing 5 years 5 months ago #1914

  • Con Boekel
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Ian
Thank you. There is much to learn! A friend of mine took one of my bird images and applied the commercially available AI Gigapixel. The sellers state that they have used AI principles to develop an algorithm which is entirely different from the interpolation algorithm that is used, for example, in PSE. He took one of my BLP standard 1400x1050 tif output bird images and magnified it by 600%. He reported that the details remained sharp. The size of the magnified file was 3 gigapixels! Glenn has suggested that this can be reduced by saving the file as a jpeg file, so that is next on the drawing board.
Con
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Last edit: by Con Boekel.
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