printing sizes and sharpness of images

[Dylan & Marianne]

A few tips Monika (already covered alot up top)
18MP is fine for pretty big prints! (7D images have come up fine at 30X40") but the original has to be good - larger prints, expose larger flaws!
Calibration to your preferred printer either home or office is useful. We didn't technically calibrate but we have developed an action over the years on our PC to increase brightness and vibrance for printing
Sharpening also depends on what medium you are printing on - there's a difference between printing on metallic (I often do for star images), fine art matte and canvas. MArianne and I love canvas prints but that's probably the trickiest to sharpen effectively to give the image some form of texture like a painting. For example, our high pass filter by default at native resolution is set at 1.6 pixels but for canvas, some parts of the image we go to 3-5 pixels. (I guess it would be similar for USM) As others have said - viewing distance is important too

Locally, Black and White are just as good in terms of output (I've found) but they don't give you as much assistance with printing as Atkins would. If you find Atkins sharpening gives a great result , go with them. If you give black and white a poorly sharpened print, it'll come out that way , but once you're comfortable with what you're doing, it'll be half the cost

[Ms Monny]

Thanks Dylan

I am actually wanting to get a print done for the local Gallery on metallic - bright colour - so I thought metallic would do well! I actually have to ring Atkins because my brightly coloured image (when I view in PSE) looks dull when I download it into their ordering-online section. ?? Don't know why??

I am hoping that all will go well with the sharpening part of things. I bumped up the radius in USM to 3 as it will be a 20x30 and will be viewed from a metre or more.....but ofcourse the gallery will always get the ones that stick their nose right up to the image to look at it!!

[ktoopi]

Wow so much great info here. I am reading with extreme interest as one of the directors at my husbands work recently retired and took all the car photos he had hanging in the board room with him. They have asked me to print and frame some large sailing photos that I took at the start of last years Sydney to Hobart to replace them. I had no idea that so much was involved!

[OzzieTraveller]

G'day mm

Just to throw another curved ball ...
I've recently had some stuff done via a normal photo print shop / fuji printer setup which 'upsized' everything to 1440DPI
I had 1x 12mpx image + 1x 6mpx image + 1x 3mpx image - all printed to 15 x 30inches and they all appeared the same when viewed side by side

It had me bothered for a while till I worked out that the printer machine was "conniving to confuse" me

Regards, Phil

[I @ M]

I've recently had some stuff done via a normal photo print shop / fuji printer setup which 'upsized' everything to 1440DPI
I had 1x 12mpx image + 1x 6mpx image + 1x 3mpx image - all printed to 15 x 30inches and they all appeared the same when viewed side by side

It had me bothered for a while till I worked out that the printer machine was "conniving to confuse" me

I vaguely remember a conversation over a cuppa where I reckoned that you would have to look very very hard at a well taken image printed large to see any flaws ( if any ) after the printers software had done its magic.

[ROA44]

In response to Ricktas comment of lots of good info. Is it possible to print these posts for more of line pondering and collating some times trying to view on web at this time of night just does not compute. Still got to get with posting a few but that's another story.

[ameerat42]

In response to Ricktas comment of lots of good info. Is it possible to print these posts for more of line pondering and collating some times trying to view on web at this time of night just does not compute. Still got to get with posting a few but that's another story.

In your browser, go to "File/Tools...or whatever" and "Print". You can save them as a PDF or print to paper. Select Print with Preview if yo have that option.
Am.

[OzzieTraveller]

G'day Andrew

I vaguely remember a conversation over a cuppa .....

Yeah I remember & still working on 'solutions' - twas nice to meet you as well

Phil