printing a 16x20

Elaine · July 6, 2007

A friend of mine wants one of my images (from a 6mp camera) to print as a 16x20. She wants to print at Costco and their minimum resolution is 2300x1840 for that size. I've cropped the image at 2303x1842 in the 16x20 aspect ratio, which equals 115 pixels/inch. Will this make a decent print or do I need to boost the resolution in PSE 5? I've been trying to read up on this stuff, but I'm getting confused. Add to it that I tried going through the ordering process of a boosted resolution image and the Costco site told me it was still too low, even though PSE told me it was far above their minimums. Any help or points in the right direction would be appreciated!!

Hinson · July 6, 2007

Elaine wrote:

A friend of mine wants one of my images (from a 6mp camera) to print as a 16x20. She wants to print at Costco and their minimum resolution is 2300x1840 for that size. I've cropped the image at 2303x1842 in the 16x20 aspect ratio, which equals 115 pixels/inch. Will this make a decent print or do I need to boost the resolution in PSE 5? I've been trying to read up on this stuff, but I'm getting confused. Add to it that I tried going through the ordering process of a boosted resolution image and the Costco site told me it was still too low, even though PSE told me it was far above their minimums. Any help or points in the right direction would be appreciated!!

Elaine, a 6mp image should give you about 150ppi when cropped to 16x20. Whether or not this is enough would depend on the subject. If it is a portrait, then it will be tight. If it is a still life, landscape or nature shot, then it should be sufficient. It will depend on Costco's printers also.

Elaine · July 6, 2007

Hinson wrote:

Elaine, a 6mp image should give you about 150ppi when cropped to 16x20. Whether or not this is enough would depend on the subject. If it is a portrait, then it will be tight. If it is a still life, landscape or nature shot, then it should be sufficient. It will depend on Costco's printers also.

It's a "portrait" of a pig

in a natural setting, so that sounds like it will work OK. When I look at Image Size in PSE 5, it says 115 pixels per inch for the 16x20 crop. Is there something different I should do to make the ppi better?

sirsloop · July 6, 2007

I'd be more worried about costco's prints than your camera. Order it off SmugMug and take advantage of the die-hard guarantee that you will be happy with the quality. I tell people over and over that want to print my stuff... I can't gurantee any other printers quality other tham SM's. I've ordered tons of prints for myself, they are framed on my walls, and I've had some people not be happy that have all gotten taken care of without question

If they go to costco they taking a risk over maybe a couple bucks...

Elaine · July 6, 2007

sirsloop wrote:

I'd be more worried about costco's prints than your camera. Order it off SmugMug and take advantage of the die-hard guarantee that you will be happy with the quality. I tell people over and over that want to print my stuff... I can't gurantee any other printers quality other tham SM's. I've ordered tons of prints for myself, they are framed on my walls, and I've had some people not be happy that have all gotten taken care of without question If they go to costco they taking a risk over maybe a couple bucks...

Hey, I hear ya!

But I'm not sure I can get this gal to budge! It would be about $11 more and that's fairly important to her. We'll see...

LiquidAir · July 6, 2007

The Costco near me uses a Fuji Frontier printer up to 10x15. When printing up to that size, as long as you give them a good original, the print will look fine. However, I wouldn't take a print any larger than that to them. If she is dead set on printing at Costco, I would highly encourage her to get a smaller print.

As for how a 6mpx original is going to look that large, it really depends on some mixture of your expectations and the viewing distance. The limits of the original are going to be visible upon close inspection, but from a distance it'll look fine. As for prepping the orginal, sharpening is going to be key. You want every part of the frame to look crsip at 100%. For a Costco printing job you also want the color, exposure and contrast to be spot on.

Art Scott · July 6, 2007

Here is what I would do go to ONOne Software download a trial version of genuine fractals 5. (waht ever it is at now) printPro (might as well down load the best trial version they have right)......do everything you want to your pic except the sharpening do that last....after sharpening go into your image dialog and resize the photo to 300dpi, this will give you just a smidge over an 8x10....now open that into Genuine fractals and upsize that to 16 x 20...this will give a file that is a 300dpi 16 x 20 jpg.....that will be tack sharp at anyviewing distance as long as you did not over sharpen.....this software should allow around 20 photo saves before it deactivates, or demands your purcahse a key...which you do not have to do.......also read the manual it is downloadable and if you have any questions they are great at getting prompt answers back to you.......this trial version is completely full featured......DO NOT CROP USING THE CROP TOOL ....give the lab all of the pixels to work with.....this is the best policy and advice given to me by my local PRO lab.

ballentphoto · July 9, 2007

LiquidAir wrote:

The Costco near me uses a Fuji Frontier printer up to 10x15. When printing up to that size, as long as you give them a good original, the print will look fine. However, I wouldn't take a print any larger than that to them. If she is dead set on printing at Costco, I would highly encourage her to get a smaller print.

As for how a 6mpx original is going to look that large, it really depends on some mixture of your expectations and the viewing distance. The limits of the original are going to be visible upon close inspection, but from a distance it'll look fine. As for prepping the orginal, sharpening is going to be key. You want every part of the frame to look crsip at 100%. For a Costco printing job you also want the color, exposure and contrast to be spot on.

Since I am the proud owner of a really BIG printer I have started to experiment with really large prints from my 10mp camera... Biggest I have done thus far is 41"x27" I used Bicubic smoother and then bicubic sharper with really good results. Still experimenting

Art Scott · July 9, 2007

ballentphoto wrote:

Since I am the proud owner of a really BIG printer I have started to experiment with really large prints from my 10mp camera... Biggest I have done thus far is 41"x27" I used Bicubic smoother and then bicubic sharper with really good results. Still experimenting

what dpi are you finalizing your file at before printing?

ballentphoto · July 9, 2007

Art Scott wrote:

what dpi are you finalizing your file at before printing?

I have it at 300ppi and the printer prints at 600 or 1200 dpi if I really want to get some detail. Still experimenting with what works best. I have a friend that has Genuine Fractals so I may toss her a file and compare that to the output from PS using my technique. Others have done that comparison and from the print outs, one would be hard pressed to tell the difference if the uprez was from done from GF or PSCS2/3.

Art Scott · July 9, 2007

ballentphoto wrote:

I have it at 300ppi and the printer prints at 600 or 1200 dpi if I really want to get some detail. Still experimenting with what works best. I have a friend that has Genuine Fractals so I may toss her a file and compare that to the output from PS using my technique. Others have done that comparison and from the print outs, one would be hard pressed to tell the difference if the uprez was from done from GF or PSCS2/3.

Is it your printer that is set for 300 dpi or the resolution of the PS file?

Cause I have tried this but I have PSCS and it doen't work for me at all......real nasty looking files . I got hooked on GF back when it was 3.0 and I had PS5.........I always do a size change in by just changing the dpi in the image and constraining the image and I work from a 300 - 400 dpi file and then take it to the image size I want in just one step.

Would you mind laying out your workflow, so that we can see how to do this?? A tute if you will please.

Thanks

ballentphoto · July 9, 2007

Art Scott wrote:

Is it your printer that is set for 300 dpi or the resolution of the PS file?

Cause I have tried this but I have PSCS and it doen't work for me at all......real nasty looking files . I got hooked on GF back when it was 3.0 and I had PS5.........I always do a size change in by just changing the dpi in the image and constraining the image and I work from a 300 - 400 dpi file and then take it to the image size I want in just one step.

Would you mind laying out your workflow, so that we can see how to do this?? A tute if you will please.

Thanks

Well here goes the Tute follows ( This is off the top of my head and I am at work so no CS2 to refer to

)

The first thing I do is to crop to the image without setting the resolution (PPI) So I select the Crop tool enter the dimensions that I would like the final output to be like 20"x16" and make sure the resolution box is empty (you may need to reset the tool).

The I go to Image > image size and a dialog box comes up with dimension that you have cropped and pixels/inch number is most likely smaller and the usual 300. I check the Resample Image box (make sure that there is a check mark in there) and pull down Bicubic Smoother. Next I pull out a calculator and add 10-20% (still experimenting with the right number) to one of the dimensions (I usually do the easier of the two). In this case I add 20% to 20" and change it to 24" and make sure that the other number changes accordingly. Then I set resolution to 300 pixels/inch, and click OK.

Depending on the speed of you computer get a cup of coffee and wait for it complete. Return to the same screen Image > Image Size, and change the 24" back to 20" (both numbers should now reflect the final dimension that you want to print to. Change Bicubic Smoother to Bicubic Sharper. Make sure the 300 pixels/inch is stil set, then click on OK.

Do final sharpening as desired and send to the printer. For an ink jet printer you will want to sharpen just a tad more than you think you should... Not too much otherwise you get those lovely halos and you just pitched a few bucks in ink and paper into the trash. If you want to take a lesson from the wet darkroom days you could copy a smaller piece from the image of a critical area and paste it into a smaller file and print the test strip before commiting to the final print.

Hope that helps

printing a 16x20

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