Image sizes for client

Sam

OK,

Dumb question of the day: I do most of my own printing, but when I need to, have ordered lab prints from MPIX, and Elko Labs. I always set the resolution, and physical size of the image to be printed. I will also at that time make any small adjustments that may be needed, after soft proofing to the labs ICC profile, or maybe tweak the sharpening after up, or down sizing.

If I want a 16X20, I make a 16X20 file. If I want an 8X10, I make an 8X10 file.

I just completed a portrait session with a couple, and I included a set of high res files in our agreement. They can then print any of the images they like.

Now to my question: Disregard aspect ratio for now. (I will have to explain this to them later after I see what shape, size the photos look best at.) I am trying to work them all into a 4/5 ratio to yield the common 8X10 size. They also talked about 5X7 to through a monkey wrench into the aspect ratio issue.

If I give them a high res file that’s say 300ppi at 16” X 20”, and they go to the local Kiosk to have 8X10’ s printed, will the lab down size, etc and print out an 8X10, or any other size requested?

How do the wedding guys deal with this?

Sam

jfriend

Sam wrote:

OK,

Dumb question of the day: I do most of my own printing, but when I need to, have ordered lab prints from MPIX, and Elko Labs. I always set the resolution, and physical size of the image to be printed. I will also at that time make any small adjustments that may be needed, after soft proofing to the labs ICC profile, or maybe tweak the sharpening after up, or down sizing.

If I want a 16X20, I make a 16X20 file. If I want an 8X10, I make an 8X10 file.

I just completed a portrait session with a couple, and I included a set of high res files in our agreement. They can then print any of the images they like.

Now to my question: Disregard aspect ratio for now. (I will have to explain this to them later after I see what shape, size the photos look best at.) I am trying to work them all into a 4/5 ratio to yield the common 8X10 size. They also talked about 5X7 to through a monkey wrench into the aspect ratio issue.

If I give them a high res file that’s say 300ppi at 16” X 20”, and they go to the local Kiosk to have 8X10’ s printed, will the lab down size, etc and print out an 8X10, or any other size requested?

How do the wedding guys deal with this?

Sam

Your images are going to print the best if they have the least amount of redundant upsizing/downsizing done to them before the bits hit the printhead. If you know the target print size and the target resoution of the printer, it's OK to do the upsizing yourself. I personally don't even do that. If I'm using a high quality printer, I let the printing software do the final upsizing because only it knows the true internal resolution that it needs and if I do the upsizing and don't get it quite perfect (off by just a little bit), then the image gets resized twice instead of just once which is a quality compromise.

When you don't know the final output size, why do any resizing at all? If you give them a 16x20 at 300 ppi, it's going to be >25 megapixels. If they then want to print a 5x7 or 8x10, they may have image size problems trying to take it to a printer (I don't think Costco or Smugmug will accept images that huge). And, even if the online printer will accept it, it will take forever to upload (if doing it online) and they will have to then massively downsize it before printing the smaller prints. A big upsize following by a big downsize is just compromising the quality. You would be a whole lot better just leaving it the original pixel dimensions and letting the printing software do one conversion as part of the printing process.

If they really want to print a 16x20 themselves and you want to control the upsizing for that print, then I'd give them an image specifically for the 16x20 (it will be huge) and a separate image that's just the original pixel dimensions for all other smaller print sizes. You could give them files with the dimensions in the name and also handle differnet crop ratios (wedding-xxx-16x20, wedding-xxx-8x10, wedding-xxx-5x7) to help them know what to use for what.