Printing sizes
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Depends how big you're printing, how far you're going to view said print from, & how good your eyesight is.
Generally, you'll be fine with any modern digital camera until you start to want really big prints.
Generally, you'll be fine with any modern digital camera until you start to want really big prints.
It's normal for club comp prints to be mounted on board with dimensions of 500x400mm.
I find that a print which is about 340mm on the long side looks good on his size mount. Any modern DSLR or mirrorless will produce good, sharp, prints at this size.
Try not to be tempted to print too large, as this will "overpower" the mount.
HTH
I find that a print which is about 340mm on the long side looks good on his size mount. Any modern DSLR or mirrorless will produce good, sharp, prints at this size.
Try not to be tempted to print too large, as this will "overpower" the mount.
HTH
OP
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So what measurements would you recommend in lightroom/Photoshop..
If you are printing from Lightroom's print module simply specify that the long side is 34cm and print on A3 paper.
If using Elements resize the image to be 34cm on the long side and print actual size.
If you've cropped the image, make sure you've got enough pixels to support 240 (or 300dpi)
If using Elements resize the image to be 34cm on the long side and print actual size.
If you've cropped the image, make sure you've got enough pixels to support 240 (or 300dpi)
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And don't forget, when it comes to printing, ppi is NOT the same as dpi. You can have multiple pixels forming a single dot
And don't forget, when it comes to printing, ppi is NOT the same as dpi. You can have multiple pixels forming a single dot
Point taken, but I thought that this might be "too much information" for the OP.
I try to make sure that I've got at least 3000px on the long side.
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I know, I thought the same - it wasn't aimed at you; just a general observation.
The most confusing thing about digital printing/resolution is best learnt at the very beginning!
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Check the club rules regarding print sizes. For example my club has a maximum size of 20"x16" (500x400mm), except in the "development" class where it's A4. But check and double check yours - it may be different.
It's usual for prints to be mounted, in which case the maximum dimensions you're given refer to the mount and the print itself will be smaller. If I'm printing an image that's the same shape as it came out of my DSLR, I find that 15"x10" fits nicely within a 20"x16" mount. Other people may disagree. But you certainly shouldn't make the image too big in the mount. For example a 19"x15" print in a 20"x16" mount, with a ½" border all round, will look awful.
Another option is to mount the photo on foam board, in which case it's usual for the image to be borderless. This means you can use the full space available to you for your image without any of it being taken up by the mount border. I think it's often the case that size helps - a good big print can be better than a good small print - and there's probably also less scope for the mount to detract from the image. Again, personal tastes vary.
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Yep - me wrong.... said it was confusing.
Dunno what I was thinking about - especially when I have a printer that manages 5760 x 1440 dpi?
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That's useless information. What size are you printing?
3000px would be perfect for an image 10" on the long side, pointless for anything smaller and would get more and more pathetic as you go bigger and bigger.
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I've never understood this 'viewing distance' thing. Its always seemed to me to be an excuse that your image is not perfect and should not be viewed up close.
Personally I don't care what you think or what your excuse is, if I want to put my nose next to it and view it up close I will.
If it doesn't work close up, you've failed, shoot a better image next time. Upgrade your equipment if you want to print that large.
As a professional I've had huge images printed, advertising hoardings, images on the sides of buses, taxis, adverts in the street, large banners in stores and so forth.
The required technical specifications I receive from my client always mean that that image needs to be perfect, no such thing as a viewing distance.
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I don't think people have failed for wanting to get the best possible outcome within the limitations of their own equipment. I have a 16MP EM1 so I know a) I have very little room for cropping and b) I have to make choices when it comes to big prints. That's good that you are able to buy new gear, however I do it as a hobby so I can't drop £3000+ on a new 40MP body and even more on lenses to afford myself high DPI large prints or extra cropping ability, I work with what I've got.
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OK, that's fine. I totally appreciate its a hobby. Even for professionals laying out for more equipment, means a dent in our profits.
There are lots of different options to explore before laying out money for new equipment. The simplest of which is shooting the image perfectly in the first place, so no adjustments are needed and then just interpolating. You can make nice big prints that you can stick your nose next to this way. I was doing that 12+ years ago with my 11mp 1ds.
Need bigger prints? Then stitch them. Again if you shoot it right in the first place, then its not difficult. I recently made a 14 foot wide print that is not enlarged at all. Purely native size. Just stitched.
As I said 'viewing distance' is just an excuse that my image and / or processing isn't good.
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And why would you want to do that? Perhaps, from where you're looking at it, the subjective quality of it doesn't quite cut the mustard.
An examination of one of your hoarding prints would look rubbish from a distance 0.5 metre. So you purchase a 2peta-pixel device so the final, hoarding print stands scrutiny at that 0.5 metre distance. Yet a 100M px image looks ok from the other side of the road at hoarding size. It's a bit subjective really.
Always go for the best, I agree, but sometimes there are restrictions - mainly financial as @LojikDub suggests
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Good point - I guess you could do a pano and stitch, that would get you a much higher MP count. I hadn't considered that
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2 main reasons.
1. Its what the client wants.
2. It what the printer wants.
I've received many specifications from printers, passed on by the client which insist on a 300dpi file. If you don't supply it, it gets rejected.
and in regard to what the client wants, not all hoardings are viewed at a distance, there are those in bus shelters for example that people stand right next to.
I receive loads of requests from clients insisting that details can be seen, such as the weave and texture in fabric. They want to show it off, and why shouldn't they?
And irregardless of that, whatever your viewing distance, more pixels, means more data. This means that ultimately I can add subtle reflections, highlights, that you wouldn't see in a lower res image. Its the same reason that tablets and phones etc. are now packing in super high resolution screens, retina displays. They look better. Photos look better.
and for this same reason, coupled with the common zoom in feature and higher broadband speeds, clients are now requesting much, much higher resolution and higher quality images for web than they would have just 2 or 3 years ago.
Now there is even less reason to roll out this 'viewing distance' argument.
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In your case, every image, no matter the size, has to pass close scrutiny. This makes viewing distance less relevant to you (or your client) because it's always the same :- "Close". Your clients want to be able to show detail at close inspection. Viewing distance is extremely important to your clients!
Not everyone has those standards though. I have a panoramic print of the Grand Canyon taken on a Canon 350D which was 13 photos stitched. It ended up 110" (9ft) x 12" at 166ppi and looks absolutely fine to me. Standing in the queue at Tesco, I can count the dots on the window display. From a few feet away, it looks fine. Our village show banner goes high on the tennis court fence so people from the road can see it - it doesn't need to be 300ppi - or more importantly, we, as a non-profit organisation - don't need to pay for super high quality.
Saying viewing distance doesn't matter, or isn't important could be very misleading.
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Quite agree - I made an error earlier in typing which didn't help. I'm bowing out - sorry Mark.
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Let me rephrase / re-iterate -
I've never understood the excuse that an image is only OK when viewed from a distance.
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Let me help you understand some circumstances in which this might be reasonable.
One if my clients shoots translights for the movie industry. These are of course typically quite large, and the largest one he's ever done was printed to approximately 100 metres wide by 20 metres high.
If he had aimed for 300 pixels per inch, as you seem to be claiming is the minimum acceptable standard, his image would have had to be about 1,200,000 pixels wide by 240,000 pixels high. In round numbers that's 300,000,000,000 pixels which is 300 gigapixels (300 billion pixels).
He shoots images like this with a Canon 5Ds, so he gets 50 million pixels per shot, but allowing for horizontal and vertical overlap means he gets about 30 million unique pixels per shot. So, again in round numbers, he would need to shoot and stitch 10,000 frames to create the final image.
A 300 gigapixel image would occupy about 100 gigabytes in JPEG format. If you view JPEG compression as an excuse for not delivering the best image quality possible - and I imagine you do - then you'd prefer the 16-bit TIFF format and that would require about 1.8 terabytes for the final image. Then of course both the JPEG and TIFF formats have size limitations, so the final image would have to be constructed from numerous individual files - probably about 25 JPEGs or about 450 TIFFs.
Do you think a lower resolution in this instance would be an excuse for not delivering the highest possible quality?
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There are of course always exceptions to the rule and this is a perfect example.
In this example the resolution / DPI factor issue is often minimised as the images are often montages, have space left for text, logo, graphics and have a high degree of professional editing applied to them.
The medium they are printed on also helps a lot.
But most people are not printing even close to this big. I doubt many people using this 'excuse' are even printing a single meter wide.