printing photo…

[RobGF]

Have you thought of upsampling the image before you reject it?

You can purchase a number of different software packages which will attempt to upsample your image to a nicer resolution while preserving detail. There have been some posts about this in the digital forum and I think Shane has a particular package that he’s fond of.

That being said, I’ve downloaded a bunch of the demo versions of these packages and I haven’t found them to be a whole lot better than doing an upsample yourself in an app like PhotoShop. BUT you have to upsample in a particular way. DO NOT attempt to upsample by simply saying “I want my image X by Y at Z ppi (or ppcm)”. That rarely works well. Instead, in PhotoShop under Image, Image Size, increase your photo 5% at a time using Bicubic resampling. Often this has to be done many times so I suggest recording this 5% increase (105%) as an action and then playing it back until you get the correct amount of data.

This technique isn’t perfect and it doesn’t work with all images to my satisfaction but depending on the image you may find it works just as well as a professional scaling program and if you have photoshop it’s free except for your time.

I know what I am suggesting sounds nuts. PhotoShop will do a much better job scaling up if you take very small steps. When you do just one big jump the program doesn’t perform very well at all. There are some sites out there that discuss this technique in detail and tests have been done comparing it with some of the professional tools… It does fare very well.

Some images are just too low a resolution to get great results and you’ll have to make a professional judgment call as to what to tell the client under those circumstances.

Good luck.

Rob

[Alison Falzon]

I don’t know if this is a silly/valid idea because I haven’t got a wide format printer anyway, but if you have a high resolution camera, can you take a photo of the photo that has been supplied?

[Stephen Morriss]

Just remember you don’t have to go above 150 dpi on the image Nicola, or even 72dpi if it’s being viewed from a distance.
Another way you can try is to print the image onto photo paper on a good desktop inkjet and then scan it, basically the same as Alison suggested.

Never thought about upsampling in stages Rob, sounds like a good idea so I’ll try that one next time I need to upsample.

Steve

[Kevin Flowers]

Nik
i have had decent results by scanning in photo, make image better, sharpen-blur or resample, tone etc print out on desktop printer good paper high quality then rescann at 1200dpi etc. Then increasein size for printing at larger size. Remember to charge for your time though

Kev

[Kevin Flowers]

seems a few of us think alike & only 2 mins between the posts

Kev

[Shane Drew]

Nik,

There is some good suggestions here.

Rob has raised some valid points tho. Incremental increases are better than one big increase.

As Rob says, I use Photozoom Pro (as do a few others here) and it makes enlarging easier without the need to do the maths.

As stephen says tho, take in to account the distance the picture will be viewed, and a 72dpi imahe will be fine from a distance.

Basically, I tell my clients if they want a 300dpi image 4 times the size of the file, they have to supply me with a image 4 times the resolution at the size they want to supply.

I put it in mathematical terms as people are more likely to understand.

In this day of computers, people think we can work wonders with electronic data.

I had a client today want me to reproduce a photo to 600 mm wide.

I asked her to send me the photo so I could check it out.

The photo she sent was 11kb, about the size of a stamp, and it was already pixelated.

Told her it will not work, and she was disgusted. 🙄 🙄

Wants me to try anyway. :banghead:

[RobGF]

quote Stephen Morriss:

Never thought about upsampling in stages Rob, sounds like a good idea so I’ll try that one next time I need to upsample.

Steve

Yep. Try it. You’ll be surprised at how well it can work in some circumstances. Just make sure you create an action so you don’t go insane repeating the same steps over and over…

Of course, there will always be times when the supplied image is just too small to work with.

If people are interested in this, do a Google search for “stair interpolation”. There are a few sites where this method is compared to Genuine Fractals and other similar products. There is even a site where they sell a very inexpensive plug-in to do all of the heavy lifting for you

http://www.fredmiranda.com/

Rob[/url]