Largets Prints possible

[SpeedyVV]

I have the Canon 6D (20.2 MP).

If I dont crop the picture, what is the largest size of a print can I get? Of course I mean that does not look pixelated or bad.

BTW, when printing, do you send the RAW or a good quality jpg?

 

[Anh N.]

How large a print you can print, really depends on the viewing distance. I printed up to 30 inches on the long side with my 6D and it looks perfectly fine to me with 300 dpi. I exported the jpeg from LR, indicated which size of print image will be, ie. 20x30". Then sent that to print lab.

 

[bman212121]

I have the Canon 6D (20.2 MP).

If I dont crop the picture, what is the largest size of a print can I get? Of course I mean that does not look pixelated or bad.

BTW, when printing, do you send the RAW or a good quality jpg?

Most people consider 300dpi print quality. ‎The camera sensor is 5,472 x 3,648.

So divide that out and you're looking at 18 x 12 for a 1:1 reproduction. Like Anh N. said, you can get away with bigger than that if you're not going to be sitting right on top of the image.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Viewing distance is critical for any calculation. It's the same concept of looking at your TV. At some point on any display you'll see pixels, but you might be at a foot away (an unreasonable distance).

To further illustrate the point, Billboards which are massive are "low resolution" because the viewing distance is great and they don't benefit from being massively high resolution. If you could closely inspect one, you'd literally be able to see the "dots" as fairly large globules that make up the image. Billboards have been made for years... using things like 35mm film. Or another example... movies and movie projection. Recently (2013) every Regal and AMC theater moved from 1080P to 4k... and no one noticed. But even if you're one of those that would argue that you can see a difference, 4k resolution is less than 20MP, and it's projected on a massive 100' screen.

The digital world is no different in that sense. There is the general concept of 300dpi being the divisor and maximum size of an image being the upper limit, but really you could make poster size prints and still be totally fine (unless you're a crazy nut case and can't get over yourself when viewing something at 5 inches of distance). Movie posters as an example are shot with the same stuff you're using. Sometimes they're done using Medium Format (upwards of 80MP) but generally 35mm is more than sufficient.

 

[SpeedyVV]

Good info on the viewing distance.

The reason I ask, is someone asked me to make a large print of a picture I took.

We are talking about like a Painting on a wall kind of situation.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

Good info on the viewing distance.

The reason I ask, is someone asked me to make a large print of a picture I took.

We are talking about like a Painting on a wall kind of situation.

If you're super critical, spend the time to resize your print to different sizes and then get them all printed. Find out what is acceptable to you and your client.

A 12"x18" print even from a high quality lab (not Costco) is still only ~$8.00. I haven't looked but even a 2'x3' print shouldn't be more than $20.

As a side benefit, this repeated printing process will help you refine your printing techniques. You may find your print is too bright or too dark. Doesn't have enough contrast. Or isn't sharp enough. The iterations will help you to put into the physical world your precise vision.

 

[SpeedyVV]

If you're super critical, spend the time to resize your print to different sizes and then get them all printed. Find out what is acceptable to you and your client.

A 12"x18" print even from a high quality lab (not Costco) is still only ~$8.00. I haven't looked but even a 2'x3' print shouldn't be more than $20.

As a side benefit, this repeated printing process will help you refine your printing techniques. You may find your print is too bright or too dark. Doesn't have enough contrast. Or isn't sharp enough. The iterations will help you to put into the physical world your precise vision.

Thanks again for the advice.

I'll start with the 2'x3' and use that as a benchmark.

 

[MN Scout]

I'd tell Lightroom in the Export tab that you want a 2ft x 3ft and 300dpi, and to sharpen it for the paper you'll be using at either high or normal. Then open the file up. You want it to look a little over sharpened.

I normally choose Glossy paper even if it'll be on matte.

If you aren't using Lightroom, then up res the file from 5,472 x 3,648 to 7200x10800, then sharpen it enough that you start to see a little haloing around the edges.

 

[SpeedyVV]

thanks for the tip.

yes I do use LR. probably the best program I've used in a long time.

 

[MN Scout]

I just submitted my biggest print - 24x33 inches. Haven't done anything over 11x14 before. I did create a crop of this one and submit it with some 8x10s to see what it would be like before paying for the huge print. Ended up doing hours of editing on it to clean up color moire on all the ropes. Also warmed it up, and color corrected the shadows.

I probably have better ones, but this picture means a lot because it was the end of a long epic day of biking on the island of Terschelling in the Netherlands. Such a great ending with low tied, sunset and great clouds happening at the same time. I have a bunch of great pictures with epic reflections.

24x33. Enough detail at full size to see the people on the boat. Bought a big frame at the 2nd hand store, and bought the print from Bay Photo.

What's bonkers is the price increase per square inch going from the smaller prints to the bigger prints. Just sky rockets everywhere.

 

[Zepher]

I used this file
http://transamws6.com/pics/acu4-10-16-05.jpg

to print a 30x40 on a Roland Soljet and it looks very good for being such a small file sized jpeg (586kb).

couldn't find an image on my webserver showing the entire photo, so I am using this 6 year old image

 

[bman212121]

I did create a crop of this one and submit it with some 8x10s to see what it would be like before paying for the huge print..

That's a really good idea as well. Crop out a small section of the photo so that an 8 x 10" is at the same DPI as what you might want the final image to be. Pick an area with a lot of detail or something else that might be affected by the enlarging process. For yours you might just take half of the boat and a bit of the clouds in front, or if the boat is going to be small enough part of the larger picture, make a smaller picture you can frame in addition to the larger one with the water and sky.

Hopefully you don't mind but to help illustrate what I image you might do is this:

I can delete that if you would like.

But if you compare that to the original it's just a small section of what you eventually want to print, but it contains all of the elements that might cause issues when scaling up, and might look good enough to stand alone in it's own frame. I literally just took the jpeg, cropped and doubled the size of the crop and resaved it. It looks a bit rough if you are sitting at a normal viewing distance to a computer, but it actually doesn't look too bad if you step back 5 feet or so from the screen. Now if you can imagine that the original is 3x as wide and 3x as tall, that would be about a 20 x 16" from how I'm seeing it. If you took the time to tweak that section and get it printed, it should be plenty to dial in most of the final picture. Once you have your settings dialed then you can spend the money for the final 20 x 16" print which will be at the same DPI as the crop.

You most likely knew what I meant but hopefully if others read this it might help them visualize a way to do that process cheaply. I'd gladly like to hear any other tips you have of how you might go about doing something like this cause it is something I could see wanting to do at some point.

 

[MN Scout]

Yes, you have the idea, I think. Of course the image will be a lot bigger than the crop you posted and look a lot better.

Here are the steps I used.
1. Decide on your output dimensions in inches. Ex: 30x40.
2. Use a software to scale you picture to the final output at 300 dpi size and apply print sharpening. 9000x12000 for this example. Save at the highest quality JPG or use a TIF.
3. Open the file in Photoshop or Gimp. To test print a section on an 8x10 then you want to clip a 1 to 1 pixel area out that is 2400x3000 pixels.
A. In Photoshop you want to choose the Dashed Selection Marquee Box tool (NOT THE CROP TOOL). In the Marquee setting at the top choose "Fixed Size" then enter 3000 px and 2400 px.
B. Click on the image and drag the selection around.
C. On the top menu bar choose Image->Crop
D. Save it out in a fileformat for your printer.

The Photoshop crop tool doesn't allow you too easily pick out exact pixel dimensions. The Gimp crop tool is fairly straightforward if I remember right, and doesn't do non obvious things like the Photoshop one does.

I noticed a few artifacts in my image. I guess I should have done another round of 8x10 testing since Bay Photo has free shipping on orders over $12 (I just submitted tons of 11x14s for Christmas presents). I don't think I'll see them on the big print. The moire tool left a few white areas in the transition from the dark clouds, through the thin orange strip. Ehh. I don't think it'll be a problem.

Edit: Here is the 2400x3000 crop. I'll take a picture of the print and post it up this weekend, and show you guys what the print ended up looking like VS. this crop. I'm having it printed on Kodak Endura Metallic Photo paper.
Edit: Using Lightroom to scale my pictures to my final print size really improved the sharpness on my prints. That is one of the reasons I'm hesitant to Smugmug or Zenfolio my catalog for people to buy prints from and get them automatically printed at different sizes, because I can't control the sharpness for each image size. I guess many people use these services, so I should look into it a little further.