Maximum size print question

IPClark

Hi All,

Hope you don't mind my asking what could be a silly question.

I'm an amateur at photography however I have been very fortunate enough to be asked by a lady for a print of one of my shots. It's more of a letterbox format image.

The shot was taken using a 400D which as many of you will know is a 10.1mp 1.6 crop. Normally, the horizontal pixel count is 3888 however a crops sees one image at 3776x1855 pixels and 3806x1936 pixels wide on another image. There is a 3rd that is the full 3888 wide and 1836 deep.

Based on these values, what would be the maximum size image that could be printed that would not compromise image quality? I suppose we would look at the smaller of the 3 (3776x1855).

Thanks in advance

Ian

arodney

Depends on the output device of course. You can probably get away with a minimum of 180 pixels per inch for most. So divide that 180 value into the pixels you have, that’s the size you can get away with.

Art Scott

It would help to know how large she wants the image........I have sold 40x60 inch prints off a 6mp camera....yes I had to up rez them and for that I use Genuine
fractals....so if your image files are in good quality and low iso.....they could be made extremely large...you can uprez them yourself with a trial copy of OnOne softwares Perfect Resize ..... it is simple to use and is the same thing as Genuine Fractals.....OnOne just renamed it to make it completely their own as far as I know.

IPClark

Thanks for the replies Andrew, Art. Much appreciated.

Art, I have to admit, I don't know fully how large an image she would like. I have emailed her and asked her this. Just awaiting a reply. I certainly don't envisage it being more than 60". So for example, supposing she did ask for an image 60" wide, it would certainly be possibly for me to provide an image that would look fine? The image itself was shot at ISO 100.

I know this probably wouldn't give a good example of the overall quality of the TIF file but here's a JPG at 1024 pixels wide.

IPClark

Just to add onto this. I will likely be printing at a company called DSCL in the UK which comes very highly recommended amongst UK based Photography forums. They have a link to an image size calculator on there. They request all images be 300 DPI. Now, the 3776x1855 image I have at full resolution is shown in photoshop as 240 DPI. If I resize this to 300 DPI, the resolution changes to 4720x2319. Based on the image size calculator on DSCL, it says this would permit me an image print of 49.17 x 24.16 Inches.

Does this sound reasonable to you?

Just to add a bit of extra confusion into everything, if I change the DPI to 300 in Perfect Resize, it changes the resolution to the values above and states the document size is 15.73 x 7.73inches. I presume this isn't the print size is it?

The image size calculator is here. It asks you to give them the DPI of your monitor. Mine is a 22" flat panel which uses a native DPI of 96.
http://auctionrepair.com/pixels.html

Thanks again in advance for any advice you guys can give a complete novice at this. If I don't have to resize the pixel dimensions greatly but just the DPI, it will be done in Perfect Resize based on your recommendation Art.

Art Scott

never worked with a calc like that I do all mine from photoshop and genuine fractals.....sending a pm

IPClark

Thanks Art, I've just dropped you a reply. I'm going to head off to bed as it's now almost 2am and silly me is in work at 07:45. Very grateful for your advice.