Uprezzing for Printing

[ayreonaut]

I have my prints made at a local chain, Richmond Camera.
Recently they printed a dozen 8x10s for me.
The images cropped only for width (3240x2592) looked fantastic.
But tighter crops (2000x1600) looked very pixelated.
I wondered why 200 ppi looked so much worse than 300 ppi.

Maybe they were sharpening before resizing to print.
So I tried sending the tight crops again, but this time I applied no sharpening,
and I uprezzed the 2000x1600 images to 3600x2880 before I sent them.
That did the trick. This time there was no pixelation or stairstepping.
The 200dpi images look slightly softer than the 300dpi,
but there are no other side effects in the lower resolution images.

In the future, I'll be sure to uprezz smaller images before I have them printed.
I'm not exactly sure why it worked, but it did.

BTW, in messing around with resizing,
I noticed that DPP does a terrible job when you save the image at a size much larger than the original.
Save without resizing and use something like FastStone to resize; it does a much, much better job.

resized with DPP (400%)
191838


resized with FastStone (400%)
191839

[EOS_JD]

Not really sure what you are doing but 200ppi prints should look fine at 10x8.

Viewing at 400% is a complete waste of time. I've read somewhere that if you view the image at 25%, that should be roughly how your print will look. Even looking at 100% on your monitor will probably look worse than the print does.

[In2Photos]

I have my prints made at a local chain, Richmond Camera.
Recently they printed a dozen 8x10s for me.
The images cropped only for width (3240x2592) looked fantastic.
But tighter crops (2000x1600) looked very pixelated.
I wondered why 200 ppi looked so much worse than 300 ppi.

Maybe they were sharpening before resizing to print.
So I tried sending the tight crops again, but this time I applied no sharpening,
and I uprezzed the 2000x1600 images to 3600x2880 before I sent them.
That did the trick. This time there was no pixelation or stairstepping.
The 200dpi images look slightly softer than the 300dpi,
but there are no other side effects in the lower resolution images.

In the future, I'll be sure to uprezz smaller images before I have them printed.
I'm not exactly sure why it worked, but it did.

BTW, in messing around with resizing,
I noticed that DPP does a terrible job when you save the image at a size much larger than the original.
Save without resizing and use something like FastStone to resize; it does a much, much better job.

resized with DPP (400%)
191838


resized with FastStone (400%)
191839
Something doesn't add up here. If you send a print to a lab for printing and they require 300 ppi then you should send the file to them at the correct pixel size for your printing dimension (like 2400 x 3000 for a 300 ppi 8x10). If you send them a file that is 3240 x 2592 and 300 ppi your image is 10.8 x 8.64. This means that the printer is resizing the images in order to print them. So in essence they have downsized your larger images and upsized your smaller images. Depending on the software algorhythms you may get bad results when they upsize but downsizing should be fine (like you experienced). You should find out what your printer uses so that you can send approriate files. I use Costco and my particular Costco uses 300 ppi so I resize ALL of my images to those specifications (4x6 - 1200 x 1800, 5x7 - 1500 x 2100, 8x10 - 2400 x 3000, etc.)

[CyberDyneSystems]

It actually all makes perfect sense to me.
Some printers have very good built in scaling features, some are terrible.
By allowing the printer to do the scaling, you ran the risk and saw the poor results.

Thus, when using an outside printer, make sure you do the upresing on your own.
A valuable lesson.

Interesting re: DPP scaling, Ive not tried it, but using other RAW converters I've tried and had decent luck.. but my preference is the tried and true Genuine Fractals plug in for PSCS.

[ayreonaut]

This means that the printer is resizing the images in order to print them. So in essence they have downsized your larger images and upsized your smaller images. Depending on the software algorhythms you may get bad results when they upsize but downsizing should be fine (like you experienced).Yes, when they downsize everything looks great, but when they upsize it looks terrible.

Isn't it silly that the Printer's software does such a poor job of upsizing?

[ayreonaut]

Interesting re: DPP scaling, Ive not tried it, but using other RAW converters I've tried and had decent luck.. but my preference is the tried and true Genuine Fractals plug in for PSCS.Isn't it silly that Canon's own software does such a poor job of upsizing?

[EOS_JD]

Isn't it silly that Canon's own software does such a poor job of upsizing?

I'd suggest user not doing it correctly as I've used DPP to upsize before with no issues. Now I use Ps and lightroom and to be honest I rarely upsize anything.

Have my own R2400 and print at naticve resolutions for most images. My 19x13s (A3+) at 180ppi look amazing!