Preparing an image for printing large

dancorder

Hi,

I have a panorama that I took whilst at the Grand Canyon and I want to print it fairly large (in three 16"x20" prints). I've not printed anything near this size before so I'd like some input on the kind of issues I might face.

For example I've done the sharpening so that I think it looks OK at 100% on my monitor which is in the same ball park as the print size will be, does that mean that prints will look good or is there something else to consider?

Obviously any other comments on the picture itself and things I could do to it would be welcomed.

Slightly pathetically I've also not (yet) got any way of calibrating my monitor so if someone could let me know if they think the image is too dark that would be great.


(Original resolution is 10995x2932)

Link to the first third at full size:
http://dancorder.smugmug.com/photos/188618111-O.jpg

dancorder

Anyone?

I'll get one third printed, along with another batch I'll be doing in the next couple of days and then adjust from that, but it would be nice to start with something at least approximately right (or am I just seeing potential problems where there aren't any?).

rustic

If anything it looks a little washed out to me, but I'm on an uncalibrated laptop right now, so I can't really be useful.

It't a great shot, though, do you have a custom frame for that beast?

dancorder wrote:

Anyone?

I'll get one third printed, along with another batch I'll be doing in the next couple of days and then adjust from that, but it would be nice to start with something at least approximately right (or am I just seeing potential problems where there aren't any?).

claudermilk

I agree, the shadows look to have been a little over-agressively lightened. The current monitor isn't hardware-calibrated, but it's darn close & images I've seen on my properly calibrated monitor look close to this one.

For sharpening, the general wisdom is if it looks slightly over-sharpened on the monitor then it will look good in print, so if you're happy with it on screen it's probably fine.

dancorder

Thank you both for looking and the sharpening information.

I'll try a version with darker shadows too, the reason they're that light at the moment is that I've read here that pictures generally come out darker in print than on a monitor (as the print isn't backlit) and didn't want to not be able to see the detail in the darker areas.

On the bright side (no pun intended) not lightening it so much will improve the lighter areas as I had to sacrifice them a little to get the darker bits up.

rustic, to be honest I haven't looked into framing yet, I'm assuming that I should be able to get 16"x20" frames fairly easily and was planning on getting three of them and hanging them side by side. However one large frame with three cut outs in the mount would probably look better. Maybe I'll have to look into getting one made (or try making my own )