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quick pricing question!
mmroden
Registered Users Posts: 472 Major grins
Hi guys,
I have two conundrums. Someone wants to buy 5 of my prints at 30x40 (yay!)
What do I offer as the price? I was thinking that, at that size, $300 each seems reasonable. No? Yes? Too little, too much?
Also, viz quality: They're taken with a 17-55 lens on a d70, so the images will be pretty decent, but I know they won't blow up that well. Should I just use the pro stuff smugmug, and hope the upsize works well? Or should I do the 1% upsizing trick in photoshop (ie, upsize 1% at a time until I get to 300 dpi)?
Thanks much-- this is by far the largest sale I've had to date, so it's pretty exciting!
The prints are these: http://mmroden.smugmug.com/gallery/1916762
I have two conundrums. Someone wants to buy 5 of my prints at 30x40 (yay!)
What do I offer as the price? I was thinking that, at that size, $300 each seems reasonable. No? Yes? Too little, too much?
Also, viz quality: They're taken with a 17-55 lens on a d70, so the images will be pretty decent, but I know they won't blow up that well. Should I just use the pro stuff smugmug, and hope the upsize works well? Or should I do the 1% upsizing trick in photoshop (ie, upsize 1% at a time until I get to 300 dpi)?
Thanks much-- this is by far the largest sale I've had to date, so it's pretty exciting!
The prints are these: http://mmroden.smugmug.com/gallery/1916762
0
Comments
After all, you have to spend money to make money.
As for price, that can be debated all day.
good for 30 days or 20 saved files ( I believe)
Above link is directly to the forma for downloading trial version....
Link to main page for OnONE Software
First you will want to do all pp'ing with sharpening as the very last thing before changing the res to 300dpi (constrain proportions only....do not tick RESAMPLE)...NOW YOUR AT 300DPI APPROX AN 8 X 10.... open it in GF and upsize to 30 x 40 inches...only take a few seconds, mayb a minute or 2....and now you have a 30 x 40 that is a 300dpi jpg so it can be view from less than a foot and still retain that truly awesome look of a super tight 8 x 10.....
As far as your prices....yeah $300 sounds good if you feel good about 300 then ask $300...also ask if they want it signed (brings upo the value to have it signed in a gold or silver ink....I have mis-placed my pen so i can only tell you I bought it at an artist supply and it states will not degrade the print and has supposed life of over 100yrs....and it is gold...didn't biu the silvr one.
Looks like dgrin can't handle enormous files. Check it out:
http://mmroden.smugmug.com/gallery/1916762/5/96929760
Any ideas on who I contact to fix this?
Or am I being silly? I thought one of the beauties of this was that SmugMug could do the printing for me, and I should provide files big enough, hence the use of genuine fractals...
PBase Gallery
"Failure is feedback. And feedback is the breakfast of champions." - fortune cookie
I have made prints 48"x60" from D70 images and no up-sizing was necessary.
For my large prints I used these folks: www.pixeloutpost.com
I usually print on canvas (matte finish) but they print on many different substrates, including photo paper. When I sold my first one I charged twice what it cost me to make it (which was $850). I now charge differently, because the galleries take 50%.
If you print with pigments, you can go much larger with the same resolution file. And if you need any up-sizing, you're better off letting your print lab handle it. They are good at it and know their equipment.
Congratulations on your sale!
Trish
Let the lab handle the upsize: http://www.smugmug.com/help/print-quality
"Tis better keep your mouth shut and be thought of as an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt"
Thanks for the help. I'll stop freaking out now, and let the lab handle it.
It turns out that smugmug has a 48 mp file limit. At least, that was the error I got when I tried to upload a file directly (rather than replace an existing file). But if they're better at upsizing than me, which I'm beginning to see doesn't surprise me in the slightest, I'll let them handle it.
Thanks again!
PBase Gallery
The sale fell through-- it turns out that UCLA pretty aggressively checks for licenses of images of the campus, and since my images aren't licensed, no deal.
Ah well, next time... :cry
But the good news is, the licensing department likes the images, so they _can_ be sold, but with a percentage of the profit going to the university, requiring a written licensing agreement. Anyone know how to do those, or where I should look for good legal help viz this kind of problem?
PBase Gallery
That sounds a bit wierd to me. If you take a photo of say the Chicago Skyline would you have to get a licensing agreement from all the building owners?
Was the photo for an advertisement?
However, as I learned after a lengthy discussion with the licensing manager of the school, that's really in place to protect, say, IBM from getting images of UCLA and using them in promotional literature, because UCLA doesn't want iconic images of their buildings necessarily to promote other brands. Furthermore, if I do sell prints to private collectors, they'd want a licensing fee. Understanding that I'm a second year grad student, though, they would waive the up-front fee of $3 grand to make it something like 8% of the purchase price.
But, if I sell to UCLA directly, I don't have to pay anything back to them for licensing, because they'd essentially be buying the images from me.
What is annoying to me is that it appeared that the buyer knew all of this, and thought he could use it as leverage to get free prints under the guise that it would be free advertising for me. Apparently, 30x40's grow on trees.
PBase Gallery
It's very possibly the case that the university has some sort of restriction. From what I have read, skylines are free of entanglements. But if you look at this, http://www.pacaoffice.org/resources/specialReleases.html you'll see a bunch of well known venues that are restricted in some way. Like the Boston Swan boats :-)
Adrien