Beginner Photo for large format printing

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Name
José
Edit My Images
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Evening all....

I was hoping to get a bit of advice.

I am working on a project at work for one of our clients and they want a picture of Southampton (landmark, docks or something along those lines) as a large format banner. The final banner will be approx 4000mm x 1750mm.
I was thinking that I would quite like to take the picture myself. Has anyone had much experience of printing their images this large? Any advice on setup, post processing and any other tips would be much appreciated.

Cheers for now (y)

José
 
You need to find out what resolution the printer wants so you can work out the pixel dimensions needed. From that, you can work out the number of shots you might need to stitch together to get the finished image. Probably best to get a budget from the client for the actual image (and a detailed brief as to exactly what they want).
 
+1, speak to your printer before you go any further. Their requirements are going to determine how you proceed.
 
Thanks guys. I'm going to be doing the printing myself.
Probably should've mentioned that I'm a sign maker by day so have a wide format machine at work. Main difference is that the day to day stuff we normally do is vector based.
I think I might take a couple of test shots enlarge them to the size I need and print a small section and see how that turns out.
I know that at that size it will lose resolution but I want to try and make it the best quality possible.

I'll Be using Lightroom to process the image. Will the resolution suffer as a result of exporting the RAW file as a jpg?
 
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Will the resolution suffer as a result of exporting the RAW file as a jpg?
No.

But speaking of resolution, you need to put some thought into how the image is going to be used and therefore what kind of resolution you need.

The "gold standard" for printing is normally taken to be 300 pixels per inch (ppi). That gives you a print with no visible pixellation, no matter how closely it is examined. But for a print the size you're talking about, it's unrealistic. It would imply you need an image about 47,000 pixels wide and 21,000 pixels high, which is almost exactly 1 gigapixel. It's almost certainly unnecessary as well, becuse I imagine you probably aren't expecting people to be sticking their noses right up to the picture to examine the details. I'm currently looking at an HDTV which probably only has about 50 ppi, but it looks great because I'm not too close (about 6m away).

So if you can indicate where this print is going to end up, and how far away you'll expect people to be looking at it, that will help us work out what kind if resolution you will need.
 
The banner is going indoors in a frame at the bottom of the escalator - I can't be more specific right now but will show you all if and when it's completed. I think when it comes to actually printing the image - I will set it up at 300dpi at 25% scale. I'll then output at 400% scale at 75dpi and that should hopefully be good enough quality. Maybe even 150dpi.
 
I've done similar, a local pub wanted a 6meter x 1.2m print, I took a 3 shot pano, so 13,000px in total. I upscaled it to 6meters at 150dpi and they had it printed as wallpaper, the result was pretty good even from about 3-4feet away.

product_wall1.jpg

Photo's not great as it was taken on my phone.
 
View attachment 8848 View attachment 8847

Hi Jose,
For something a bit different you could try a 360 picture as used for VR movies then print it as a panorama. If you have the right location with a good set of landmarks this can be quite effective. I know Derby County football ground is not a very good example but it gives you a good idea what can be achieved using this method.
 
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