Printing help with this please...

Hey All,
I have a picture here and most of the people in it turned out pretty well except for the kid on the left hand side. It was getting dark, and it was literally my last shot of the day because I was losing shutter speed fast by then. Looking back, I should have done this pose first when it was brighter out, but I'll just have to save that for next time. Anyway, the boy on the left and the one in the middle were moving just a little more than the others when I took this (if you were to look at the sequence, you can see he was skipping and acting goofy and the little one was bouncing). My question is,

How big of a print do you think I could make from this image? They love the pose and feel of the picture, but my concern is with the blurred boy on the left and the little one in the middle. Would it look OK blown up to say 18 x 12 or bigger? I am hoping that the longer viewing distance of a print like this would make up for a little blurriness in some spots. Comments welcome!!

EXIF:

HTTP response: NOT FOUND | MIME changed to 'image/jpeg'

It would help to know the resolution of the original. I'm guessing the image you posted here has been scaled down and it looks like it's suffered some softening in the process. I took it into PSPX and managed to recover some detail and sharpness with Noise Ninja and Focus Magic but without knowing/seeing the original it's pretty hard to say for sure how well it would print at 18x12.

Very true, sorry about that, I guess it would help if I posted up some EXIF too.

It has been resized, but I didn't touch anything other than reducing the size of the image. Also, if there's any way I can post a link to the full-size image, I would appreciate someone telling me how and where I can host it. Imageshack and Photobucket (what I usually use) limit the file sizes. Thanks!

I've added the EXIF data to the original post.

So I guess the original is 8mp which means at 18x12 you'll be printing at around 200dpi. I would think with some sharpening work, maybe selective in some areas it shouldn't be too bad. You could always test print a cropped region of the tricky areas to double check before getting the full size print done.

If you want to print it at 12x18 Costco will do it for under $3. It's probably worth that much to find out.

BTW - it is a neat image. A pretty good capture.

good advice. I think I'll do it, thanks!

If I may make three suggestions relative to your post and your questions:
1) It would be difficult to make an accurate appraisal of the print relative to the question of how big an enlargement is possible, because the image as posted is approx. 1 Megapixel. That prevents any truly authoritative evaluation of sharpness of your original image. I would recommend a Full Detail (100%) Crop (more on that to follow).
2) The guidelines for this forum limit your posted images to 800 pixels on the longest dimension - this image is almost 1200 pixels wide.
3) Once the two previous points have been resolved, you will have posted a full frame shot at 800 x 600 pixels, just for purposes of seeing the entire image for general evaluation and in addition you will have posted a small crop at about 150 x 150 pixels of a Full Detail (100%) Crop for purposes of evaluating the sharpness for purposes of evaluating large print potential.

Here is a reference for making the Full Detal (100%) Crop -
Go to Frame 41 of the following link: Tutorial on Full Detail 100% Crop
https://photography-on-the.net …thread.php?t=34​606&page=3

I didn't know about the 800 pixel rule, sorry about that. I wanted to make it large enough to get an idea of what it looked like but still keep it all on one screen (for most people).

I can only host a file of 1 Megabyte or smaller, so I've done a 100% crop with no post processing. Any comments about printing this fairly large are welcome!

When you have your full image printed as 18" x 12", it will have 6300 pixels divided by 18 inches or 350 pixels per inch.

As I view the Full Detail (100%) crop on my monitor, I see it at 96.6 pixels per inch (my monitor resolution is 1280 pixels / 13.25 inches).

Therefore, I am seeing the crop at a size that is 3.62 X as large as it would appear when looking at the print (350 / 96.6 = 3.62).

The proper viewing distance for an 18" x 12" print is approximately equal to its diagonal, which would be 21 inches.

Since I have to step back 3.62 X that distance from my monitor in order to see the crop as I would see it in the final print, I have to step back to a distance of 76 inches from my monitor.

When I do that, I cannot see any artifacts in the image, but my vision may not be as good as yours or as good as the vision of other viewers.

So, it is now up to you and other viewers to decide whether or not what they see on their screens from the appropriate viewing distance is sharp enough, because that is what they would see when looking at the print from 21 inches.

Only one boy is left in the image. I don't like to print blurry/out of focus images bigger than 4x6 because that size can hide flaws.