Larger prints 8x10 and beyond

[DrPizza]

The parents of a couple of students I have really can't afford much for their senior portraits. They hired a professional and were able to afford two 8x10's and a bunch of wallets. The kids came up here and were trying to do additional shots on their own (and some of them, imho, turned out excellent.) They want to try having them printed in a larger size than 4x6.

Questions:
1. How large can pictures be printed and still turn out well? (Yes, I know this varies greatly) What I mean is, a typical consumer 4 or 5 megapixel camera, be it Fuji, Canon, Nikon, Sony, whatever; how big is too big to hope for? The pictures turned out great on 4x6, and look great on my LCD monitor at full size. I've never had a need to print 8x10's, or even larger, thus have no experience doing so, although I recall a relative getting a few photos from an older digital camera printed as 8x10's; some came out good, some didn't. IIRC, it was a 1.3MP fuji fine pix camera they used.

2. Do the online printers do a decent job with the larger sized photos? Any changes that should be made to the photos prior to uploading them?

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

1. 8x10 is the limit that I would print 4-5MP images. Back in the day I had a 4MP P&S and 8x10s came out ok. But you have to factor in viewing distance. If you're really peeping close at a picture, looking for unpixelated individual hairs or something like that, 4MP 8x10 would not be the greatest. But for regular viewing as a framed picture over a fireplace or something it should be just fine. I don't know if Adorama is still having their 8x10 sale, but printing 8x10s from an online place or from Costco is not too expensive, certainly not anywhere near the price of a professional.

2. I've ordered 8x10s and larger from Adorama and Costco, and both places turned out great photos IMO. I would do something like Auto Contrast in Photoshop and add a little sharpening. You probably don't have to do this considering it's from a P&S, but if the color space is not sRGB, change it to sRGB before uploading (or follow the printer's instructions). You also should expect slight color differences between the print and your monitor because your monitor is probably not color calibrated. Some monitors are more faithful than others in reproducing accurate colors too. I have an old Dell 2001fp and it produces pretty faithful colors right out of the box. I also owned a BenQ monitor from an older version of xtknight's LCD sticky in the Video Card forum and that was just... whoa. Everything was off. But this was normal because it was meant to make things like games and movies appear vivid and stuff, but vivid is not faithful when you're talking color accuracy.

 

[OdiN]

Another good and cheap place to get prints is mpix.com. Excellent results and great pricing.

1.3MP really is not enough to print an 8x10 with, as fuzzy said.

I can get 16x24's out of my 8MP canon, but that's landcapse, viewed farther away, as well as having some post processing done to clean them up some and also starting with a properly exposed photo that uses all the data (no crop). For closer up viewing, 11x14's turn out very nice. You can get away with 16x20's and even 20x30's with an 8MP camera, as they are usually wall-hung and are viewed from a distance.

 

[virtuamike]

1. I have a 2 page spread (22"x17") in my portfolio taken with my D70 (6MP), and I'm pretty picky about prints. My buddy did plenty of big prints with his D2h (4MP). Don't worry about pixels especially on something as small as 8"x10". Worry more about the shot itself.

2. Most places want sRGB. WHCC gets my vote, although I know plenty of people that get quality prints through Costco.

 

[GoingUp]

I sent my 4MP prints to adorama, and they turned out fantastic. I got 9x12" photos to preserve the aspect ratio and I think they were $3 each. You also have a ton of choices for border and bleed and adorama will even color correct the photos if you want.