How do I calculate how big I can print an image?

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BertieTBE

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I need to send someone a high resolution image. But I'm so confused about what 'high-resolution' actually means!! Have looked at various sites but still no clearer.

I have an image with a dimension of 1834 x 2695. I need it printed at least to standard size (6 x 4). The file size is only 217 KB, not sure if that helps??

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thank you very much.

Ben
 
for "normal" photo's (i.e. something you look at whilst holding in your hand - in a album say) work on 300dots per inch. so for 6x4" prints 1800x1200 resolution or above will normally be fine.

For "wall hangers" - it's possible to relax that figure a little, depending on the distance you're going to view the image at... it's highly unlikely you'll be looking at the entirity of a 2metre wide picture from a foot away, after all...

so - 2695x1834 would be fine for a 9x6, probably perfectly acceptable for a 10x8" print but if it's a reasonably detailed image then 16x10" would be pushing it a bit for my personal tastes
 
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BertieTBE said:
I have an image with a dimension of 1834 x 2695. I need it printed at least to 6 x 4. The file size is only 217 KB ...
Click to expand...
You seem to have a compressed, lowish-quality jpg there judging by the file-size. The pixel dimensions are just half the story - the quality setting when saving a jpg is the other. Is that your only original? At 300 dpi for a 6x4 print, a high quality jpg would likely be between 1 and 2.75 Mb ...
 
Yes, 217 KB is tiny for an 1834 x 2695 image.

Unless it's a photo with very little detail (such as a picture of just a cloudless blue sky) I would expect there to be significant JPEG artefacts visible in any of the detail.
 
Is there a reason why one should not multiply the dimension (say 20 inches) by the number of dots per inch (300 for printing)? Thus for a 20" X 16" print the image should be 6000 X 4800?

For most of us we would need our software to upscale the image in order to create this resolution.
 
ancient_mariner said:
Is there a reason why one should not multiply the dimension (say 20 inches) by the number of dots per inch (300 for printing)? Thus for a 20" X 16" print the image should be 6000 X 4800?

For most of us we would need our software to upscale the image in order to create this resolution.
Click to expand...

the multiply by 300 for every inch is valid for smaller photo's - the kind of thing you hold in your hand and view from under a couple of feet away. As you get larger pictures, they tend to be "wall hangers" and you normally view them from further away, which means as they get bigger you can have a lower DPI without it being visually obtrusive.
 
I'd wondered, because I've just ordered a couple of canvases at 16 X 24 and the recommended resolution was 7838 X 5438 to allow for overlap on the frame. How big do you go before dropping resolution?
 
I tend to go by whether the print will be held in the hand, if so, I usually try to stay at 200dpi or higher but if it's to go on the wall (basically, be seen from 1m or more distance) I'll drop that to 150dpi if necessary. Having said that, I usually print at the full resolution available rather than downscaling and resize up as part of the cropping process if the file is from a smaller sensor than the D800's. Recently been doing some A3+ prints for my wife and some of them are (gentle) crops from the D700 - look pretty good to me!

Canvases by their nature can usually handle lower resolution before visible degradation is a problem and large ones will rarely get looked at close up (apart from by people looking to find faults...)
 
ancient_mariner said:
....... I've just ordered a couple of canvases at 16 X 24 and the recommended resolution was 7838 X 5438 to allow for overlap on the frame. ......
Click to expand...

The 'gallery wrap' feature in Perfect Resize is excellent for sorting out the overlap area. The front part of the canvas (the actual image) could stay at 7200 x 4800 (24" x 16" at 300 ppi) and the overlap added by Perfect resize would be 638 x 638.
 
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Ozei said:
The 'gallery wrap' feature in Perfect Resize is excellent for sorting out the overlap area. The front part of the canvas (the actual image) could stay at 7200 x 4800 (24" x 16" at 300 ppi) and the overlap added by Perfect resize would be 638 x 638.
Click to expand...

Sounds good - which application is this in and how do I find it?
 
Ah, gotcha. I don't have a computer of high enough spec to run photosuite at the moment, but it's something I'll bear in mind for the future. Thanks.
 
I had 200 printed off the other week for a 2013 album for the kids. I've just had a quick look at a dozen or so & they seem to be between 1.1mb - 1.7mb aside from the odd exception. 305dpi as default from LR for all my images. I then made copies of all that I wanted & resized in CS to the actual dimensions of 6" x 4" which came out at 1830 x 1220 in pixels.
 
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