Printing Photos

[Brainonska511]

Hey guys -

Someone approached me about making really large prints (at least the full width of a roll of paper ~25" wide or wider) and I was wondering how well 8MP (3456 x 2304) would print out? Would they be really pixelated at that resolution and that printing size? Additionally, how many DPI would you want to set the picture to in order to print something that large?

Thanks.

 

[troytime]

depends on the camera and picture quality and picture subject

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: troytime
depends on the camera and picture quality and picture subject

Rebel XT, RAW shots post processed in Lightroom. I believe the subject is going to be architecture around the college campus.

 

[soydios]

It also depends on viewing distance. I'm in the middle of a musical right now, and they've got 4-foot-tall photos taken by me using my 6MP Nikon D50 onstage. Up close the detail isn't so great, but it isn't pixelated. From far away you'd never tell.

 

[Brainonska511]

Originally posted by: soydios
It also depends on viewing distance. I'm in the middle of a musical right now, and they've got 4-foot-tall photos taken by me using my 6MP Nikon D50 onstage. Up close the detail isn't so great, but it isn't pixelated. From far away you'd never tell.

Thanks. I think the person wanted to hang these in a dorm-common room with 20 foot ceilings (so not necessarily at eye level).

 

[QueBert]

maybe I have low standards, but I've seen some Rasterbated images, both color & B&W that looks AWESOME, of course they look bad close up but on a wall at a normal viewing distance they looked really great. A lot easier to print and you can take a regular resolution image and blow it way up.

 

[Anubis]

ive printed 30x40s from my D70 and they look fine at proper viewing distance, if you put your nose on the print yea it wont look as good as say a 8x10 but who does that

just make sure you are printing from a preoerly edited and set up PSD or other uncompressed larg format image file, 300 DPI is pretty standard, good printer also helps

 

[ObiDon]

i have a 24" x 36" poster that i had made out of a ~4.4MP (1706x2560 crop from 5MP) nature shot just to see how it would come out. that would be around 72dpi.

like others have mentioned in this thread, from a foot away mine looks a little blurry but there's no pixelation. from four or more feet away it looks pretty good.

edit -- thought i should mention that it was made from one of the better quality pictures from the particular camera i used.

 

[GrJohnso]

You should also look into some of the software for resizing photos for large format printing as well. Alien Skin's Blowup http://www.alienskin.com/blowup/index.html is a great tool for this, getting some impressive results in all the reviews I've read and examples I've seen...

There are other products out there that may be worth trying out. Take some small crops of the original photo and blow them up to a size you can print at home/school to get an idea at what you'll be capable of.