I have to make a large print out of a small photo!

<p>A furniture store is interested to have one of my prints sold at their store. My photo is 4096x4096 jpeg at 300 dpi. What they want me to do is make a big print, preferably 40x40 or 50x50. Is this even doable with dimensions I'm working with? The laptop that contained the RAW files were stolen so I'm left with this file I have on my other computer which is a jpeg 4096x4096. </p>

 

If you print a 4096x4096 image at 40"x40", that's just over 100ppi. That's probably asking too much. Don't forget though that viewing distances at that size are slightly longer. The content of the image is relevant too - some images will "absorb" this kind of thing better than others. Will people expect your image to be sharp on close-up inspection? JPEG compression also comes into consideration - are there any compression artifacts that will be highlighted by printing at this size?

 

You could check out some software designed specifically for this kind of thing, e.g. Resize from ON1 or Blow Up from Alien Skin. Try their free trials. What have you got to lose?

<p>PS gives about 35 x 35cm with 300dpi, with 180 dpi about 57 x 57cm. Perhaps you can consult a professional printing company for better result in big print.</p>

<p>I have a Mac computer and by clicking "Actual Size" in the "Preview" program, it enlarges an image to a point just before pixelation. My 4416x3312 jpegs are good for enlarging to 46"x36"</p>

<p>I think you will get an adequate enlarged print without pixelation from your 4096x4096 jpeg. Your 4096x4096 should get you an enlargement of about 41"x 41" and still look ok pixel wise</p>

<p>It should be doable depending on the original photo and the distance at which the enlargement will be viewed. I had to do this for a funeral, when the family had a portrait in a small file and wanted an enlargement up at the front for the ceremony. Increasing the image size in Photoshop prior to printing worked very well.</p>

<p>I don't know what software you have or the quality of the JPEG (amount of compression). Here are my recommendations.<br>

- Go for the smaller size 40 x 40<br>

- Upsize the image for printing using good sofwareware (e.g. Photoshop, Perfect Resize, etc)<br>

- Sharpen image for that print size<br>

- Do a test print of the whole image (or a portion of the image if you don't want to invest in the full print) and give it a look.<br>

If you are satisfied with the image, then you are good to go.<br>

As others have said, it depends on the minimum viewing distance of the image. Typical viewing distance is about the same as the diagonal of the print as a rule of thumb. However, when buying, a customer may look closer. 240 to 300 dpi is good for high quality viewing at 10 inches 120 dpi to 150 dpi at 20 inches and 80dpi to 100 dpi at 30 inches minimum viewing distances.<br>

Hope this is helpful.</p>

<p>See if you can find a print shop in your area that specializes in large-format graphics. I regularly have prints made for banners and signs at parties that are bigger than what you're considering. FWIW, the printer I use requests a PDF at half the final output size, and they scale it up to final output.</p>

<p>Thank you for all the helpful tips<br>

Just to give you an idea, this is the photo I have to work with. (screenshot attached to this thread)<br>

<img src="http://i64.tinypic.com/25k562o.png" alt="" /><br>

I have two options. Reshoot the whole thing, which makes me worried because I did this back in 2014 and I'm not sure if I can achieve the same results. I had a hard time setting up flashes and everything and to be honest I don't remember how I setup exactly. <br>

The second option is to print at 40x40 and hope for the best. But since my other works have been exhibited, and have great quality, I don't want to make my work seem cheap by selling a pixelated work. <br>

I have never done a test print the way you guys told me to do so. So do I just enlarge the photo to a 40x40 in photoshop and crop a section of it and print it on a 8x10 paper? Is that how it works? <br>

Also since I mostly shoot film and scan the negatives, I'm not that great with photoshop and resizing images. I usually have to make images smaller to print, never bigger. How do I do enlarge my image so that is the best it can get at 40x40. </p>

Keep in mind, at 40x40 people usually

won't be looking too closely. Just

make sure you can't see pixels or JPEG

artifacts and you'll probably be fine.

<p>You have enough resolution to uprez the image if using LR4/CS6 and up upsampling. I've uprezzed my 6MP (3000x2000) Raws converted to tiff in LR4 to 36x24 240ppi with very good results for viewing a print at a reasonable distance. Just make sure you sharpen enough without producing thick halos and crispy high frequency noise artifacts along edge detail.</p>

<p>Your image has a great deal of contrast between the flower and the dark background and looks fairly sharp already. I would use only a bare minimum of adjustments remembering of course that adjustments are usually destructive and lower the image quality</p>

<p>A handy read ...</p>

1

<strong >Open the image in an image editing program, such as Photoshop.</strong> Increasing the size of the actual image will always result in loss of quality and increased pixelation. There is no way to increase the size of a JPG, PNG, or BMP image without losing quality.

 

http://www.wikihow.com/Change-the-Size-of-an-Image-in-KB

 

 

 

An advantage would be to retain the highest possible megabyte size to ensure max quality so all I think you should do is sharpen incrementally, checking as you go with the image enlarged on your screen. If you have no way of sharpening it, just leave it the way it is. That high contrast image will still look ok at 3'-4' viewing in the store in my opinion.

 

 

In a furniture store, sharpness may not be a big issue with a single flower against that black background in that image and in any case a 40"x40" print won't really appear all that large on their wall, if that is where it will be displayed

 

 

The print will soak up a lot of black ink, the operator wouldn't want to be starting off with near empty black cartridges

<p> </p>

<p>ooops ... some of my text in my last post fused with the Handy Read ... immediately after the link, my own opinionated text starts, beginning with "An advantage would be ......."</p>

<p>Check with the folks at adorama, There advice is usually spot on.</p>

<p>Use Perfect Resize to any pixel dimensions you require.<br />Keep in mind a print 50" x 50" has a viewing distance of almost 10 feet away and no-one will be the wiser or closer than that in most circumstances. <br />Viewing distance = diagonal of image X 1.5. Do the math and you'll see.<br />You can easily print to 150dpi at that size and get great quality imagery.<br />Avoid all the talk about additional sharpening to make up for not enough pixels, thats the quickest way to ruin a large print is adding unnecessary artifacts.<br>

My 2 cents worth having done very large printing to Vinyl wrap on objects.</p>

<p>Thank you so much guys. <br>

Very helpful. <br>

The store requires me to mount my print. Now all the prints they have in their store is mounted on plywood. I assume that would be a very bad option since it ruins the print after a while (it's not acid free and the chemicals get into the print) If my work is going into people's houses it should be of good quality. My work has been exhibited before so I don't want it get a bad reputation just to make more money.<br>

I'm trying to find alternatives and gatorfoam backing or acrylic facemouting seem to be the best option but still very expensive. Do you guys have any other suggestions for mounting and laminating my print? <br>

By the way I live in Canada, so the suggestions about US based print stores won't be any good. </p>

<p>I don't know how people can judge , estimate or control the viewing distance for prints . there isn't usually anything about an art print ( as against an advertising poster or whatever) that prevents people viewing from pretty much whatever distance they want- or the distance that their curiosity drives. It is not safe to assume that people understand that big prints are going to be unsharp close up, or that they will always be x feet away unless there's a barrier to control that result. The OP needs to make a test print and judge whether its good enough for him at any distance and if so at what distances. </p>

<p>I don't know how people can judge , estimate or control the viewing distance for prints . there isn't usually anything about an art print ( as against an advertising poster or whatever) that prevents people viewing from pretty much whatever distance they want- or the distance that their curiosity drives. It is not safe to assume that people understand that big prints are going to be unsharp close up, or that they will always be x feet away unless there's a barrier to control that result. The OP needs to make a test print and judge whether its good enough for him at any distance and if so at what distances. </p>

<p>What would be wrong with gluing an acid free sheet to the plywood first then gluing the print to that. Be consistent with the store's prints already there, use plywood, do a neat job, use dead flat ply and tidy up the edges smooth and clean</p>

<p>So guys I'm resizing the photo<br>

The original photo is 13x13 inches at 300 dpi.<br>

<img src="http://i67.tinypic.com/34fbcy9.jpg" alt="" /><br>

Let's say I want to make a 27x27 inches print. Do I change the Width and Height to 27 and manually change the resolution to 200 pi? <br>

<img src="http://i68.tinypic.com/w71mqv.png" alt="" /></p>

<p>Just making sure I'm doing this right. </p>

 

<p>I don't think it's a guarantee that people will be away further from a larger print, it's just reflexively people will tend to take an overview of an image, fitting it into a relatively fixed angle of view. Also an image on a wall is awkward to examine in detail, and people don't like looking awkward.</p>

<p>John, if you're printing to an inkjet at 40x40in. as you've indicated in your topic post do a resolution test on your own home inkjet printer.</p>

<p>First enter desired enlarged size in inches and uncheck Resample (turning it off) and print a small crop containing sharp diagonal edges and fine detail to your home inkjet printer to see if you get saw toothed edges. If not, then you can print at that resolution. If you do see those types of artifacts, turn on Resample by checking it and up the ppi by 25ppi and print the crop test sample again. And keep upping the ppi if necessary.</p>

<p>There are advanced techniques that can recover the image to eventually be "acceptable". However, you know already there is an upper limit on the resulting quality of what you are putting out there. While I too love technical challenges like this, my advice is that it's not a problem that needs to be solved.</p>

<p>I suggest spending the same time and effort reconstructing it, and it has the potential to be even better than your original raw, and outright AWESOME! That should be your goal in this case -- not taking on restoration of a jpeg. Don't mess around just attempting to "get on base", when you have the potential to knock it over the fence! Don't sell yourself short. (You ask for our advice. That's mine.)</p>

<blockquote>

<p>My photo is 4096x4096 jpeg at 300 dpi. What they want me to do is make a big print, preferably 40x40 or 50x50.</p>

</blockquote>

<p>At 40", that works out to 102PPI. A good digital capture can be resampled up easily 200% and output just fine! You <strong>don't</strong> need any 3rd party or exotic software. Photoshop or Lightroom will do the job just fine. Proper capture and output sharpening will be key too. IF an inkjet printer, 200PPI is about the minimum you'll need to resize (maybe 180PPI but at this point, 200% isn't a big deal). <br>

If you have your own desktop printer, you can test this and output a small sample (8x10) of the much larger, resized image. IF you have Lightroom, it's a tad better and resampling up than Photoshop's Bicubic smoother but you'll have your nose on the print to see the difference. <br>

This might help (or better, get Jeff's book,<em>The Digital Print)</em>:<br>

http://www.schewephoto.com/workshop/PerfectColorPrint.pdf</p>

 

<blockquote>

<p>There are advanced techniques that can recover the image to eventually be "acceptable". However, you know already there is an upper limit on the resulting quality of what you are putting out there. While I too love technical challenges like this, my advice is that it's not a problem that needs to be solved.<br>

I suggest spending the same time and effort reconstructing it, and it has the potential to be even better than your original raw, and outright AWESOME! That should be your goal in this case -- not taking on restoration of a jpeg. Don't mess around just attempting to "get on base", when you have the potential to knock it over the fence! Don't sell yourself short. (You ask for our advice. That's mine.)</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Alan, since this is your first post in this thread to whom are you giving advice to regarding printing digital enlargements?</p>

<p>Or did you post in the wrong thread?</p>

 

<p>Tim, OP posted the original image and stated that one option was to reshoot it. But he had reservations about it looking the same or as good. As several have stated, what he has should scale up fine. I was just encouraging him to use the opportunity to print something as large as 40 x 50 to do even better.</p>