Lowest dpi for Good Print?

[dsze]

Can anyone offer advice on how large I can print (or have printed) from my 300D? I know that at 300dpi, the image is about 8X10. I would like to have a quality 11X16 printed for my lounge room. Can I do this and maintain photo-quality? Are there any PS tricks I should be aware of or prep-work besides the usual work-flow.

General info:
300D camera
shot in RAW..processed to jpg
using PS CS
will probably send away and have printed.

thanks,
daniel

[Scottes]

It depends on the viewing distance. 300 DPI is generally very good for something that people will hold in their hand. At 240 DPI it's good if they're a couple/few feet away. 180 DPI is fine if they're several feet away. (Rough rules of thumb.) Personally I like the idea of 300 DPI if you're not going to have control - like if you hang it on a wall were people can walk right up to it to get a better look.

What I would do it take the original and upsize it so that it's 3300x4800, or 11x16 at 300 DPI. The best way to do this is in increments of about 10%. Open your image and take a look at the Status Bar on the lower left. It will probably say something like "Doc: 12.4M/12.4M." To the right of that is a triangle. Click it and you get a menu, choose Image Dimensions. Now that box will say "3000 pixels x 2000 pixels" or whatever.

Now Image... Image Size and change the top right box from Pixels to Percent. In the top left box put 110%. Make sure that "Constrain Proportions" is checked, and the Resample Image is checked and set to "Bicubic Smoother." Click OK.

Do that again and again (recording an action is a good idea) until the dimension are smaller than 4800x3300. If you go over just undo. As the final resize step do Image Size to the exact dimension of 4800x3300.

Sharpen the final image - it's generally accepted to go a little strong for prints, but it's gonna be a crapshoot until you've printed a number of things at larger sizes. You may want to try a few different levels of sharpening and print crops at 8x10 to see what looks best. It's a few more bucks, but better than printing a big one and having it look soft.

[dsze]

Thanks.. Everything makes sense, except when you say, "Status Bar on the lower left." I don't see a status bar on the lower left in my PS opened image.

Also, do you think that this method will produce a better print than just lowering the dpi to 200? At 200dpi I can get close to 11X16.

By the way, these prints will be on a wall, but will be a good 6-10 feet from the floor in a rather large, high-ceiling room.


thanks again!
-daniel

[Scottes]

If the can't get close then 200 dpi might be good. As I said *I* like 300 DPI. I tend to be a perfectionist about this stuff, and sometimes I overdo it. :)

200 DPI is certainly a lot less work. But if you've got the time you can end up with a better print.


And sorry, the status bar isn't on the image, it's Photoshop's status bar near the bottom of the screen.

http://www.itsanadventure.com/postimages/statusbar.gif

[robertwgross]

shot in RAW..processed to jpg


What would be interesting is if you take the original RAW file and convert it into TIF before you fool with it. It might or might not make a difference, depending on the JPEG settings that you used before.

---Bob Gross---

[dsze]

Scottes, I don't have that status bar in the bottom of my photoshop window. ??? Is that something I may have turned off accidently?

-daniel

[dsze]

Nevermind.....just found it....I'm dumb. Sorry.

-daniel

[dsze]

....but, why bicubic smoother and not just bicubic or bicubic sharper?

-daniel