Digital Photo Printing

<p>First off I'm sorry if these questions have been asked and answered already. I couldn't find anything all that relevant so if you don't want to respond but rather point me to a thread with this info that would be great as well! <br>

<br />I'm kinda new to this digital photography thing and I am getting to the point where I would like to make a couple prints. However I am somewhat confused when it comes to certain aspects. <br>

First: Aspect Ratios. I understand aspect ration in general, you cant make an 8x10 print <br />from 3:2 ratio without cropping (or cutting) off 2 units. 3:2 amounts to 8x12 where as 5:4 amounts to 8x10.<br>

So my question is: what about when I do a "custom" crop. Say drop the top of the photo to make it more "panoramic looking" or bring the sides in a bit to get rid of a tree branch. How do I figure out its ratio and dimensions for printing? <br>

Second: resolution. I shoot in RAW. I edit to my liking then I convert/save to JPEG. I use LR4. When exporting photos you have the option of "quality" and "pixels per inch" or "pixels per centimeter. The default was set to quality-90 and ppi-240. <br>

What is the best settings for printing. Should I put the quality up to 100 and raise the ppi or switch to ppc and raise that? Not sure what the standard or tradition is when it comes to exporting for printing. I usually dont mess with the settings if I'm just going to be putting the photos online. <br>

<br />Lastly: How big? How big is too big? Do I keep it modest or should I push it? <br>

<br />Thanks for any advice. I REALLY appreciate it! <br>

<br />John </p>

<p>You can print a 10" x 5" photo on 10" x 8" paper and trim away the wide blank strip. JPEG quality 95 is no worse than 100 but means rather smaller files. The standard for high quality work has been 300 PPI, but acceptable prints can be had from much less. I'll recommend that you start with modest sizes.</p>

<p>Since large prints are typically viewed at a greater distance, they are often printed at lower pixels-per-inch resolution than 300ppi. The key variable for the human viewer is distance.</p>

<p>You also have to keep pixel size and image size clear in your mind. In Photoshop, but similar in other programs, when you use the <strong>Image</strong>><strong>Image Size</strong> choice you get this dialog box. Note the effects when you change the pixel size with the various options checked and unchecked where the arrow points. <br /> To crop without changing the image ratios, just use the crop tool or select with the rectangle tool and use <strong>Image</strong>><strong>Crop. </strong><br /> <br /> Remember also that the size of the print in actual printing can be set in the printing dialogs, regardless of the pixel dimensions or "size" of the image on screen...<strong><br /></strong></p><div></div>

<p>In your editor you should have a cloniong tool and before upsetting the composition by cropping the whole side of the photo to get rid of the tree branch you should consider cloning it out. One may not use the clone tool as sometimes it is a copy and paste over of suitable material and then gently erase the edges of the paste [ which should be on another layer] with a soft tool to get it to meerge with the background layer. I find this very easy using Paint Shop Pro but Adobe has different tools which apparently from what users write make it hard. LR doesn't have layers which is one reason why I don't use it.</p>

<p>I ignore ppi until I come to the printing stage where it has meaning. If you are using a dot printer it is best to maintain 300dpi for whatever size print you are making as people tend to pixel peep rather than hoping people will keep back from large prints. To maintain 300 dpi there is the 'resample' or 'interpolation' option where the computer invents the extra pixels baswed on what you already have. If you are not pushing the process too much it is very effective in avoiding showing pixels in the print ... what is too much depends on the subject matter of the photo. It was used more often when 3 and 5Mp cameras were the norm, less needed with today's high Mp cameras.</p>

<p>How big is too big ...for best IQ I would divide the available pixels by 300 and the answer will be the print size ie 4000/300=13.3 by 3000/300=10 a 13x10 print trimmed from 15x12 paper perhaps. There is another angle to consider that some printers have a natural resolution which when divided by a 'whole' number comes to 360 and people with those printers use 360 rather than 300. The theory that you avoid decimals in the resampling process. It was the buzz in printing circles some years back but I don't know how serious it should be considered.</p>

<p>First off, are you printing at home, or uploading the files to a lab for printing? Because that will affect some of the answers.</p>

<p>When you save as a JPEG, the "quality" refers to the amount of JPEG compression. The higher the quality setting, the less data the lossy JPEG compression loses, so the better the accuracy of the file compared to your original picture, but the larger the file. For most uses, a quality of "90" might be fine. But take some reasonably sharp, detailed picture, make sets of JPEG's for 8x10's with, say, qualities of 25, 50, 75, 90, and 100 (and put some markings in the image so you can tell which is which), and compare the prints for yourself.</p>

<p>The JPEG's resolution should normally correspond to the resolution of the printing device (except for very large prints--lots of issues). Maybe to state it more accurately, the JPEG's pixel dimensions should normally correspond to the size of the print you want at the printer's resolution. Expressing that as pixels/inch and/or pixels/cm are just two ways of saying the same thing, just like your can of Coke has the same amount whether you call it 12 ounces or 355 milliliters. Most inkjets are somewhere around 300 or 360 ppi, and most digital minilabs are somewhere around 250 or 300 ppi. (These values are nominal, and cannot be used to derive <em>exact</em> pixel dimensions for a given size print, for several reasons.) So for an 8x10-inch print on a 300 ppi printer, you need <em>roughly</em> 2400x3000 pixels (and strictly speaking, with most labs, whether you tag the file 300 ppi or 72 ppi or 964 ppi doesn't matter).</p>

 

<p>In Lightroom, none of the edits are destructive. You can experiment all you like, and even create virtual copies to produce different version (e.g. a 5x7 crop, an 8x10 crop, etc). Press the 'R' key in the develop module and look on the right-hand panel for the little lock with the word "original" next to it. This is a drop-down menu where you can select an appropriate ratio for your crop, and lock that ratio so that it doesn't change.</p>

<p>In LR, a jpeg quality of 92 is apparently indistinguishable from 100, but provides reasonably sized files. I leave my ppi set to 240, but really, the whole ppi thing is almost worthless. It's only usefull when figuring out how big a print you can get from an image. E.g. 4000 pixels at 300 ppi gives you just over 13 inches.</p>

<p>Re: cloning. That's all well and fine if that's what you want to do. That doesn't change the fact that, to fill up a 4x5 ratio print from a 2x3 ratio image you have to re-crop. So yes, you must select what portion of the image to not include.</p>

<p>This fascinating claim about non destructive Lightroom is a load of old coblers as If you keep a copy of the camera file in an archive folder and have a working copy in another you always have the camera original to fall back on. There is othe other point that if you work with adjustment layers the original [ the working duplicate ] is untouched. Only real editors have adjustment layers .. LR does not ...<br>

Storage is so cheap these days that earlier desires for small files at the expense of IQ are no longer tenable.<br>

As for people who shoot 3:2 which is really only suitable for postcards .... nuff said<br>

The suggestion to consider cloning was made with regard to cropping to remove unwanted subject matter NOT to obtain a format suitable for a given print size ... some people !</p>