D60 DPI question

[CHR4MSU]

Greetings,

I'll be the first to admit I am no pro when it comes to shooting with my D60.

I was asked to shoot a group shot of 16 people for a poster.

I shot the image on the Large-Fine setting and gave the image to the graphic artist putting the poster together. The artist gets back to me saying the dpi is too low and the image won't work for the poster.

I put the image into Photoshop at home and its 3072x2048 at 180 dpi.

My question to the group, is there something I'm missing on my camera to increase the dpi of the images I take or is that done in Photoshop? If so, how?

Thanks in advance!

Peter

[DonCoon]

What size poster are you shooting for?

Forget the 180dpi; it's meaningless. What the printer wants are pixels. For example if you're after a 20x30 poster, he's got about 102ppi (3072/30, 2048/20) which is pretty low. What does he say he needs in ppi?

[CHR4MSU]

Thanks,

The poster is going to be 18 x 24 the actual image will be most of the poster size, just slightly less. I think the artist is putting a border around it or something.

I'm sure he is looking for a 300 or higher dpi.

Any suggestions?

Thanks

P.

[DonCoon]

If this is truly a poster -- not a picture -- he shouldn't expect 300ppi. That's "excellent quality" standards. Assuming you'll be viewing the poster from, say 3 feet, 160ppi should be adequate.

A 18x24 you've got 128 which many labs consider "minimum."

One option is to resize it in PS to whatever he says he needs as a minimum.

At 160ppi, resize to 3840x2880

200 = 4800x3600

Etc.

Conventional wisdom says to do this in multiple steps.

I'd ask him what he needs first.

Good Luck

[CyberDyneSystems]

You can try to upscale the image,.. ie: resample to a larger size. The best way to do it is with a plugin app called "Genuine Fractals" but if you don't have it just do it in photoshop.

Open the image in photoshop,

click on "Image" and select "Image Size"

Then it will give you the width and Height at the top in pixels.

Below that it will give you the width and height in inches given a specific "Resolution" listed directly underneath.

First,. Change the "Resolution" number to 300 "pixels/inch"

You will see that the "Pixel Dimensions" change... ignore this for now.

Now in document size tye in the size in inches that the final poster will be roughly (depending on the aspect ratio of your original verses the print size you may need to tweak this. For instance a standard landscape d-60 wil get you a perfect 16"X24" print,. for 18" X 24" you will need to crop the sides slightly.

For the 24" X 16" image,. you will end up with a pixel dimension of 7200X4800 pixels and 98.9M file.


Thats the one step way to do it. Many suggest that increasing the size in increments will result in a sharper final image.

[CyberDyneSystems]

looks like Don and I were tying at the same time,. :D

[CHR4MSU]

Thanks guys for all the help. When/if I reshoot it I'll give these suggestions a try.

The funny thing here is, well odd I guess, is I was just supposed to supply the artist with the photo. This guy has Genuine Fractals and Photoshop and probably a bunch of other programs I've never heard of before, he is doing the layout, I'm wondering why he doesn't blow the image up and go to town on it? HA!

In any event thanks for the tips, I'll try it on some other photos and see.

Peter

[RichardtheSane]

I notice you shoot large/fine.
If you shoot RAW then the conversion software allows you to select the DPI from the start, and also to select 16bit. If it is going to poster size then I would shoot raw and convert to tiff anyway, much better quality :)
(I am not going down the raw is better than jpeg line, it just seems to fit in this situation)

[CHR4MSU]

Hmmmm. Thanks. I may need to track down my software CD and install that conversion. I shot a couple test images in RAW this morning and I couldn't open them straight in Photoshop.

Thanks again, time to dig for that CD! :)

P.

[CHR4MSU]

Ha! Found the CD and plugged it in and it worked. I wasn't able to set the dpi but I was able to convert and save to a 16 bit TIFF file. When opened in Photoshop it still reads 180 dpi but I'm able to change the resolution to 300 and save again. Whther or not the artist will be able to use that, who knows!

Thanks.

Peter

[RichardtheSane]

That should be fine. Personally I use Capture One LE for raw conversion, there is a 15 day trial, see what you think of it's capabilities :)

[hawg]

180 ppi should be fine for a poster. 267 ppi is the minimum for print media ( which is excellent).