Can't print this image at 5x7 - making me nuts!

I have an image that I was trying to print on my Canon i9100 for a customer, and when I crop it to 5x7x300dpi and print it on high-quality 5x7 paper, it is quite blotchy. I print the exact same photo on 4x6 and it's perfectly printed. If I print it at 5x7 on letter paper, it's still blotchy. Print it on another printer, and it's fine. I printed another 5x7 on the i9100 on the same paper and it's great.

Any ideas? I don't think I've screwed up anything here.

I've attached a crop of the 5x7 and 4x6 so that you can see the difference.


- Joe

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Looks like the noise in the image is being sharpened up. Do you have a sharpening routine in the print driver perhaps?

BoySpot wrote in post #4015138
Looks like the noise in the image is being sharpened up. Do you have a sharpening routine in the print driver perhaps?

Nope. And like I mentioned, I can print other images at 5x7 with no problems. This one is "special" somehow.

What paper brand and type are you using? Are they the same for each size? Try printing 4x6 on your 5x7 paper. Might be bad or old paper.

gparvan wrote in post #4015232
What paper brand and type are you using? Are they the same for each size? Try printing 4x6 on your 5x7 paper. Might be bad or old paper.

I've tried HP and Kodak, both brand new, and both are fine with other images.

I just tried printing them as if there was 4x6 paper in but put the 5x7 paper in - and both the HP and Kodak showed no improvement. Printed one on 4x6 paper after that and it's fine. I expected all 3 to be fine, actually. This has me baffled.

What size in pixels is the original (uncropped) image and what percentage of the original is the crop?

jbimages wrote in post #4016014
What size in pixels is the original (uncropped) image and what percentage of the original is the crop?

Original: 2592x3888, crop is 1500x2100 - or roughly 55% of the original's size.

How old is your printer?

JoeTampa wrote in post #4016110
Original: 2592x3888, crop is 1500x2100 - or roughly 55% of the original's size.

I was wondering if the crop @300dpi resized the image. I don't specify a resolution when I crop to make sure the image isn't resized.

gparvan wrote in post #4016154
How old is your printer?

2 years old? Something like that.

jbimages wrote in post #4016246
I was wondering if the crop @300dpi resized the image. I don't specify a resolution when I crop to make sure the image isn't resized.

Even if it had, my workflow is the same for all 5x7's - crop in PS to 5x7x300dpi, and print. Others come out just fine.

It looks to me that there is a great deal of noise (even on the 6x4 crop), there are visible lines across the images (even taking into account the compression artifacts of JPEG). When you crop to 5x7x300dpi what is the setting in CS3 for upsampling (bicubic smoother/sharper or nearest neighbour)? It looks to me that the act of cropping involves some level of upsampling which is sharpening the image accentuating the noise to a level at which it is unacceptable.

Maybe altering the upsampling method to bicubic smoother may remove some of the noise, otherwise you may need to smooth the original before attemtping to create the 5x7 crop.

What size image are you sending to the printer? 5x7@ 300dpi or is it bigger and you're letting the printer "resize" it? If you are sending a very large image to a printer for a small print, its internal resizing function can make a print look bad.

Are you just cropping the original to 5x7 @ 300dpi or are you cropping then reducing the crop to 300dpi?

It's also possible that when you are cropping, your crop is under 300dpi by a bit, but you're somehow telling the software you want it at 300dpi so it is then enlarging the image - essentially blowing it up which will exaggerate noise.

A couple 4x6s I printed a couple years ago came out with a big grid pattern across the whole image due to Photoshop elements or the printer's resizing of the image for print. But if I resize it properly before printing it, the print comes out fine.

I am cropping the original to 5x7 @ 300dpi in PS with the crop tool. Again, I should mention that when I print the image in question to another printer (Epson R-220 that I normally only use for printable CDs) on letter sized paper, it looks great. It's only printing to the Canon i9100 that it looks crappy. Same paper, same workflow, same everything.

crawford wrote in post #4017303
It looks to me that there is a great deal of noise (even on the 6x4 crop), there are visible lines across the images (even taking into account the compression artifacts of JPEG).]

That's from me scanning the print to post up. The original 4x6 looks perfect.