Large print size from small jpeg?

Brent60

What a way to break my lurking status. I have searched the posts as well as I could and not finding any that really answered my question here goes. I am trying to suprise my wife for Christmas by finally getting one of her Bridal portraits printed. A friend of hers did the photography and gave us the originals with full rights for reprints. I would like some expert advice as to with the file size being only 470 kb is this going to be enough to look nice being printed to say a 16x20 canvas. Reading all the other posts it looks like the resolution is there for doing this. I've just not had enough experience printing small files before. Any help in this will be appreciated. Here is the link to the photo in question.
http://brentgaylephotography.smugmug.com/photos/224543394-S.jpg
Thanks again.
Brent Gayle
brentgaylephotography.com

jfriend

Brent60 wrote:

What a way to break my lurking status. I have searched the posts as well as I could and not finding any that really answered my question here goes. I am trying to suprise my wife for Christmas by finally getting one of her Bridal portraits printed. A friend of hers did the photography and gave us the originals with full rights for reprints. I would like some expert advice as to with the file size being only 470 kb is this going to be enough to look nice being printed to say a 16x20 canvas. Reading all the other posts it looks like the resolution is there for doing this. I've just not had enough experience printing small files before. Any help in this will be appreciated. Here is the link to the photo in question.
http://brentgaylephotography.smugmug.com/photos/224543394-S.jpg
Thanks again.
Brent Gayle
brentgaylephotography.com

The original for that image is 1386x2006 pixels. Here is Smugmug's recommended size chart for enlargements. For a 16x20, they recommend you have at least 1024x1280 which means you should be safe for that size.

Here are a couple other things to think about:

This image has a slight color cast (the yellow is a little low and the cyan a little high). I think the skin tone can really improve with a quick touch up on the color. I can do it for you, if you like and you can compare to the original.

The image is a little bit soft and that might show in the enlargement. I don't know if that's because of the lower resolution, the 1/60th shutter speed, the focus or the optics. It can be improved quite a bit with sharpening, but you would probably want to do some selective sharpening as I think it looks better with general sharpening all over and then some additional sharpening in targeted areas like the eyes.

Depending upon how you are going to mount this, you should make sure you have enough bleed area around the edges for a canvas print as this one is cropped moderately close to the edges. For a mounted canvas print, you lose quite a bit of the edge according to this diagram:


Lastly, are you sure your wife wants an enlargement of just her? My wife would not, but would enjoy an enlargement of the two of us or the wedding party. Obviously, you know, better than I, what she would want, just making sure you've thought of this.

If you want any help on touch up before printing, just let me know and I'll see if I can help.

Andy

It's enough resolution but it won't make a great print, the original is not terribly sharp. I'd love to see the real original to this file (I'm guessing there's a larger version?)....

Brent60

Well thanks for both of your replies. Yes the image would need some sharpening. And Andy as far as i know this is all we have. I'm thinking he either shot or wedding using medium jpeg or just compressed it afterwards for the DVD he gave us. Either way this is all we have. My main concern was how the file size would affect the final print. Again thanks for both of your quick responses one of the things I think from what I've seen that makes SmugMug so good.

-Brent