photography - getting prints. Where and how big?

I know nothing. I don't really need to be educated, either. I have a family picture taken at Portrait Innovations that I want to blow up for my wife for V day. It's 1.58 megs, 3216x2136 in high res jog format. How big can I make it? I have two frames available, the current matting gives me a choice of 23x34 and 19x22 (roughly on both).

Where to go? Hundreds of places online. They all seem about the same. I found one that says 24x36 is too big.

How big to go? It's going on wall, you'll view it from maybe ten feet away.

help? You guys know everything else...

Well you've got the res, so from there it's easy to calculate out how big it can be before it gets grainy. Just look at what DPI you want the printed picture to be, then divide your res by that DPI.

I'm not a printer, but I seem to remember that 300 DPI is a standard number. Assuming that I'm right, the a picture at 3216x2136 would net you an 11x7.5" print.

EDIT: Reading up a bit on the DPI entry in Wikipedia it looks like it's not such a straight correlation between pixels and DPI. Apparently printers need more dots to replicate the color information of one pixel, so your image may come out nicely as a larger print than I calculated above.

1.6 MB is not huge as image files go. I would think the image would be looking pretty shabby if you went any bigger than 8 x10.

There's a chart here that might help: http://www.hp.com/united-states/consumer/digital_photography/print_better_photos/tips/print-size.html

Granted a lot of this is very subjective. I'm very picky about image quality and I don't believe that digital photography has gotten to the point where it can match a good medium format camera, or even a good 35mm. It's a lot like digital audio. We have forsaken high quality in the name of convenience.

I should add that the camera I now use most often is a Canon EOS Rebel T2i which shoots at 16MP, IIRC. It's a decent camera, but it ain't no Hasselblad.

For large format photos you want to keep the image resolution around 150 dpi or better so it doesn't go pixelly on you or just look kinda fuzzy. You're original is about 10 x 7 - taking to about double is fairly safe - 23 x 34 is probably not going to look so hot.

edit: As size goes up - resolution is decreased by a corresponding number. The printer doesn't care - it spits out ink at its designated flow.

1988RedT2 wrote: Granted a lot of this is very subjective. I'm very picky about image quality and I don't believe that digital photography has gotten to the point where it can match a good medium format camera, or even a good 35mm. It's a lot like digital audio. We have forsaken high quality in the name of convenience.

Insofar as audio, it's not the digital that causes the quality sacrifice, it's the format that people choose to keep their digital audio in. Mp3s are trash for audio quality, but that's what won the mindscape; to most people, digital audio = mp3, and that's a right shame. Ogg vorbis files have better sound quality at the same file size, and FLAC files completely retains CD quality (FLAC = Free lossless audio codec).

300 dpi is what I use for print. But I have a 24"x36" picture on my wall that I took about 8 years ago. I forget the exact resolution of the original, but it was probably about 1.5 megapixels. I used Photoshop to scale it up (there are some nice plugins for doing this) and nobody's ever noticed or commented. Heck, I'd have to walk across the room and take a close look to be able to tell. It's not a family portrait, though, which typically invites closer inspection. In that case, I'd be more tempted to go with 8x10 or 11x14 or so.

As with music and video, sometimes the content is more important than the resolution.

Keith wrote: 300 dpi is what I use for print. But I have a 24"x36" picture on my wall that I took about 8 years ago. I forget the exact resolution of the original, but it was probably about 1.5 megapixels. I used Photoshop to scale it up (there are some nice plugins for doing this) and nobody's ever noticed or commented. Heck, I'd have to walk across the room and take a close look to be able to tell. As with music and video, sometimes the content is more important than the duplication.

That's what I am hoping for, right there...

If you want, I can test it out for you. I have a large format printer at home.

tuna55 wrote: I have a family picture taken at Portrait Innovations...

Before going much further, do you have a copyright release? Without that, printers aren't too keen on printing. Did you buy the file with rights to make copies? Usually, when getting digital media from a photographer, they'll include the release.

oldtin wrote: If you want, I can test it out for you. I have a large format printer at home.

I don't want to cost you any money, though. Is there a way to do it rather cheaply? Although, if you have real live photo paper, I could just pay you to do it rather than some crappy online photo place... That's actually a good idea.

RealMiniDriver wrote:

tuna55 wrote: I have a family picture taken at Portrait Innovations...

Before going much further, do you have a copyright release? Without that, printers aren't too keen on printing. Did you buy the file with rights to make copies? Usually, when getting digital media from a photographer, they'll include the release.

Yes - I got the release.

Then you're golden. Just making sure.

My wife ran a photo lab for over ten years and has done photography in pro studios, and they get real touchy about that. Heavy fines for making copies of someone else's work.

You'd be surprised at the number of people that would bring in a5x7 family portrait they had taken by a professional, and wanted to make 11x14, wallets, etc, to give to the rest of the family.

Tuna - you've got a PM

In other news, oldtin is possibly the nicest guy on the planet...

tuna55 wrote: In other news, oldtin is possibly the nicest guy on the planet...

He just wanted another picture of your wife!

1988RedT2 wrote:

tuna55 wrote: In other news, oldtin is possibly the nicest guy on the planet...

He just wanted another picture of your wife!

Another?

She is pretty cute...

I may have to worm my way into oldtin's heart.

I just printed a 12282 × 3118 pixel image at 240 dpi and it was ~ 15" x 52" without any loss in quality.

N Sperlo wrote: I may have to worm my way into oldtin's heart.

tried sending a pm - it bounced back - lemme know what you want. This is the printer I have at home. It can print on paper, vinyl, canvas, adhesive vinyl... I've been known to play with photoshop too.

Oldtin, what's the cost to run one of those things?

The library here has one similar and they charge $5 a square foot for gloss/semigloss

Taiden wrote: I just printed a 12282 × 3118 pixel image at 240 dpi and it was ~ 15" x 52" without any loss in quality.

12,282 pixels wide? Was that a stitched panorama or a typo?

Taiden wrote: Oldtin, what's the cost to run one of those things? The library here has one similar and they charge $5 a square foot for gloss/semigloss

A lot depends on the media. Running cost for matte/gloss photo paper is around $0.80/sf without building or business expense/overhead. The buy-in on the machine is around $6k for new. Mrs. Oldtin's use is more episodic - like doing a print run for an art show... so it may sit idle for a month at a time. Then again, she can get a return of about $50/sf. Sometimes I run stuff to keep the printer heads clear.

ReverendDexter wrote:

Taiden wrote: I just printed a 12282 × 3118 pixel image at 240 dpi and it was ~ 15" x 52" without any loss in quality.

12,282 pixels wide? Was that a stitched panorama or a typo?

larger image