Proud Papa of My First Large Prints

[Lost Canadian]

Hey Brad, I played a bit with the program and here are my rough thoughts. For what I would consider a normal resize, say taking a native 10-20" print and making a 20-30" print out of it, I honestly couldn't see much of a difference between LR and Perfect Resize, I actually think Lightroom did an ever so slightly better job, and did it much faster to boot. I told Lightroom to enlarge a file I had to 20 inches at 300 dpi with print sharpening set to standard, and told Perfect Resize to do the same, 20 inches wide at 300 dpi. Perfect Resize did keep lines a hair sharper IMO without any jagged pixels or artifacts but it also made textures a little more "mushy," which looks kinda cartoony to me. The difference between the two though was pretty much negligible, especially once you lay down a print on paper where the papers surface texture gobbles up those insignificant differences.

I would guess that Perfect Resize probably does a very good job on really big upscales though, but again that's just a guess. I haven't had enough time or experience with the program to make any sort of solid claims about it. When I upsampled 300%, 400% with Perfect Resize, on screen anyway, it seemed to do a really good job of keeping away all pixel edges, and the mushy textures never became obscene, it just looked "stretched" for lack of a better term. It would probably look normal on paper, or canvas as you've experienced.

The only catch to upsampling that I have is it's not really an answer to more resolution, and by that I mean we won't add or find more detail in doing it. So I suppose you could say I have some personal reservations as to how large I'd want to increase a native image. It would depend on the image though. If it was a really detailed shot where the detail was a key element to the overall image I don't think I'd personally go too far away from the native. If the shot was less dependent on detail or where it at least wasn't quite as important, I would probably have no reservations with going larger. Again though it's all dependent on the image details, where it's going to be viewed, it's viewing distance, size etc.

I won't personally be buying the software but I don't do big enlargements all too often either. Big prints usually equal higher costs, and A1 or A2's with a 2-3" matte and frame is usually as large and as much as people want to buy, at least from me, and even that usually adds up to more then they want to spend.

 

[taco2go]

Those prints look great Brad !

It would depend on the image though. If it was a really detailed shot where the detail was a key element to the overall image I don't think I'd personally go too far away from the native.

My feelings for most of my landscape photos- they don't lend themeselves well to enlargements over 20 X 30. I've been seeing best results at 16 X 18 on my largest files. (all through Bay Photo) I love the rendition on canvas, but again, I seem to lose definition on images over 16 x 18.

Macros on canvas seem to fare better in the 24 X 36 range but that is the largest I've seen them printed.

Trevor your matted and framed prints look very smart. What if I may ask are the specific matt dimensions you are using for for A1 and A2 sizes. To my eye that seems to be quite critical for presentation of near-far compositions, the larger the prints get.

 

[Tucson T4R]

Thanks for the feedback Trevor.

One thing Perfect Resize has is a set of sliders where you can control the amount of sharpening and how much detail protection you want during the enlargement. I played with different settings until got the result I wanted.

I agree though, there is no question that when you enlarge 500% you certainly are going lose the crisp detail of a native sized print. Just depends on the image and what you intend to do with it.

 

[Tucson T4R]

Thanks Joash. It was a fun educational process for me. I'm sure I be doing a few more in the future.

 

[Every Miles A Memory]

Those are some outstanding images Brad! Love me some Bayphoto! I use them for almost all my prints!

Just had one of Cindy's pictures enlarged for her for a Christmas Present that is 30"x60" - It's looks amazing and the detail at that size is outstanding! I simply upped the Dpi to 300 in CS5 and it printed at that size with no issues. I actually had to crop it a bit to fit in the image box. It was taken with a 5D Mark II, so that is a bit larger file than that 50D will produce

Another thing I've noticed is when getting images printed on Canvas, I dont worry too much about the detail because the ink tends to bleed a bit, so you wont notice if a line is slightly jagged on your monitor, you wont see it in the printed image. That image above was printed on normal paper, so it is what you see on the monitor

 

[Tucson T4R]

Wow Pat :Wow1: That is one awesome print. Cindy had to get a kick out of seeing her capture almost life size.

Trevor mentioned he typically uses LR to upres for large prints and you use CS5. I had no idea those software applications had the capability to produce enlargements at that level of size and quality. Have you ever played with Genuine Fractals or Perfect Resize 7 to compare results? I used the 30 day demo of Perfect resize and was thinking about purchasing the product but if CS5 and LR can do the same thing I would be wasting my money.

 

[Every Miles A Memory]

Brad, just go to the top tool bar in CS5 and go to Image > Image Size > and you can adjust the size to anything you want. Usually upping it to 300dpi will enlarge it substantially.

My old Canon 1D used to come out of the camera at 72dpi and I could use that for images up to 11x14, when I'd up it to 300dpi, the file size was so huge it would almost crash my cpu! The new Canon's come out of the camera at 240dpi, so upping them to 300 doesnt create all that huge of file sizes now, but it helps when printing really big prints.

Plus, that 5D Mark II is a 21mp sensor! :Wow1:

 

[Tucson T4R]

My 7D is an 18MP image. When I upresed the image to 40X60 @ 300dpi the TIFF file size shot up to 1.2 GB:Wow1: The final JPG that I sent to Bayphoto ended up being about 97MB. That be a large pile of bits.

 

[Lost Canadian]

Trevor your matted and framed prints look very smart. What if I may ask are the specific matt dimensions you are using for for A1 and A2 sizes. To my eye that seems to be quite critical for presentation of near-far compositions, the larger the prints get.

Thanks, and depends. The mat size largely depends on the wall space to be filled. For instance I've done 4" tall x 3" wide mats on 8x10's to give me a square frame to fill a square space as such...

...and I've done 2" mats on 20" wide prints like the shot below. It's really more about pairing the framing to the wall space to be filled then it is about the image alone. I find a properly proportioned mat/frame paired to the wall size will do wonders for making the image look good and stand out. I have actually had an interior designer buy a 5x7" off of me and she had it framed with a 17.5" x 16.5" double white mat that measured, when all put together, over 40" square with a skinny black frame,... and it looked great. But ya, it's a balance between image separation and wall space. If you can find yourself a good framer they are worth their weight, as they will know what questions to ask you and will help you to pair an image to the space to be filled. For instance mine has asked me to take a picture of the space as well as provide measurements.

 

[taco2go]

Thanks, and depends. The mat size largely depends on the wall space to be filled. I find a properly proportioned mat/frame paired to the wall size will do wonders for making the image look good and stand out.

Thanks for sharing some of your examples, trevor. I absolutely agree- the matt/frame is very much an additional compositional element. - sometimes even dependant on the content.
I will post up some of my samples that I had printed on paper at a local photographer's lab, done with additional space around the image.
The portrait orientations are the ones that I find particularly challenging- and I'm trying to come up with a "rule of thumb" for spacing around the 16 X 18 sized prints.

 

[Lost Canadian]

The portrait orientations are the ones that I find particularly challenging- and I'm trying to come up with a "rule of thumb" for spacing around the 16 X 18 sized prints.

Do you have a large wall, you could always try something like this one, only larger.

or this for larger prints in smaller spaces... I don't really think there is a rule of thumb that you can apply though, there's just too many variables, just like image making itself.

 

[psykokid]

Nice shots and prints! Here's my .02 from having worked on the lab and processing side of the photo industry for some time

The lab I last worked at had an Epson 9600 which we used to print a lot of stuff on canvas. Generally, any file with a higher ppi than 180 was usually a waste of time in spooling the print. You couldn't tell the difference at a normal viewing distance, and you would usually be hard pressed to tell the difference unless you were looking at the final print with your face an inch away.. I know the epson printers gave better results if your files were at 180 or 360 ppi instead of 150 or 300 as there was less interpolation going on in the drivers to fill in the dots.. I still remember when I first started shooting if you wanted something on canvas your only option was a conventional emulsion transfer onto canvas, later IRIS prints came along but they were just meh as far as quality goes..

 

[Tucson T4R]

Thanks for your input.

I have heard the same thing from many sources about 180ppi being more that adequate for quality large prints. I have no Idea why Bayphoto demands 300ppi image files for their process. I do like their rep in the industry and their results are excellent in my limited experience so I guess I'll keep generating huge 300ppi files for awhile. :elkgrin:

 

[Pskhaat]

I'm really confused. I'm not a good photographer but I've written lots of image manipulation tools. A final image at the end is just a NxM matrix with a color depth (pixmap). DPI is totally arbitrary until it is projected onto media/screen/&c. If you enlarge the matrix then there are gridding programs which can interpolate between the adjacent pixels. Is that what you mean by "upresing" to 300dpi? Why should CS care what the DPI is, that is scaled at the service bureau (printer).

 

[Tucson T4R]

I am no expert either. All I know is the printer asked for JPG image files that were sized for 40X60 print at 300 DPI. When I output a JPG image file with those specifications it is 13200 X 19200 pixels image and at 300 dpi that turned out to be a bit over 87MB. They asked and I provided. I just assumed they knew what they needed to generate the final image that I wanted based on the process and printing equipment they have. Beyond that I have no idea.:elkgrin: