First time printing problems.

Hi everyone,
I have been approached through my Flickr account to sell a picture I have, to be printed at A2 size. Now thats very flattering and I'm willing to do it but I'm embaressingly so rubbish with computers I'm not sure how.

Now the photo was taken with a 450d/XSi ( 12.2mp ) so how using DPP can I get the digital negative ready to send for the 'client' to print off. It will be printed in landscape style. If anyone needs to look at the pic then its on my flickr under "young sparrowhawk"

I do have Elements 7, which since I fitted a new hard drive to my laptop hasn't been installed, as I find at the moment DPP suits me fine.
Thanks in advance everyone
EDIT
I have at the moment imported it to Flickr and used their software to edit the picture I added a frame and my signature then the name of the bird then I tried to format it to print off at a 10"x8" at 350 dpi. I then saved the changes. I then sent that to my memory stick to take it to be printed. I had it printed in my local supermarket but the picture came out really fuzzy

Sorry to say, the only way to get "GOOD" prints is via a colour managed system.

I is probable that the Flicker software is not up to much.

We as a fourm have a member "Rene" who has written much with regard to colour mangement, see https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=707058 this i hope will give you an insite, sorry to say your local supermarket will NOT give you good prints for sale.

Hi Reyk
I only tried to print off 7"x5" as a tester and they weren't just not good quality they were abysmal. Honestly they were so blurry even the girl on the counter apologised for them.
I processed them in DPP and only added a frame and a watermark in Flickr as there is no method for me to so in DPP.
I realised that the supermarket will not be able to do A2 but the buyer has asked for them to be sent in a high resolution email.
Thanks for the link I will read it now.
EDIT
I have now read the link. This isnt a poor quality print issue as the link implies, this was a completely blurred print. As I have never printed any of my photos from RAW processing before I am wondering if I'm doing something wrong. If you look at the photo from my link to my Flickr page you can see the shot is reasonably sharp. The print out bears no resemblance to this picture.
Thanks for your reply

Just send it to a decent and let them worry about printing it, and let them color correct if you're not sure about that.

tim wrote in post #10381919
Just send it to a decent and let them worry about printing it, and let them color correct if you're not sure about that.

Thanks for the reply Tim.
The colours were pretty much spot on so no worries there. I wanted to print them for my own folder but my buyer wants me to email them to her.

Can I just save the picture with the quality setting at 9, then leave it at the default output setting at 350dpi. If I then leave the resizing setting alone and send it via email will that suffice for her then to send it where ever she wants to to have it blown up to A2 size. And will my 12.2 mp camera be enough for that size print.

For my own prints, can I do the same, then take them to where-ever to have them printed and let the printing people set the size required by me and portrait/landscape orientation too.

Thanks again,

No one to help me out ??

First how does the picture look when you open it on your computer? It has happened a bunch for sites to mess up pictures in some way.

Then: you want to check the properties of the jpeg that you downloaded from Flickr -- it's possible they resized it as part of their processing without you realizing it. You can do this in either your system File Properties or in DPP, etc -- your pixel dimensions should line up with the jpeg you uploaded to them, although the cropping and border should be taken into consideration. You are printing a 16x24" print, so you want all the pixels you can get. You say you resized it to 8x10 inches at 350 ppi -- is the picture in fact 2800x3500 pixels?

Now, be aware that at this resolution you won't print the 16x20 at 350 ppi -- you'll be printing it at a bit above 150 ppi, but in practice this should give a pretty good quality for that size of a print at a "normal" viewing size. It should show more "close" resolution than seeing it on your monitor at 100% (full zoom view), so if the picture looks good in DPP when you double-click to zoom in to 100% in the edit preview then it should look good in the print since your monitor has only a resolution of about 100 ppi (likely less). You can move back a bit from the monitor to get a more "realistic" view, that is, the normal viewing distance of a picture is typically farther away than what you view a monitor from. You may want to apply some special sharpening for the enlarged "viewpoint" -- you can try DPP sharpening, but Elements will have way more options.

Then a printer. You are in the UK, so those of us not in the UK can't help much for localized printers. I'll leave those in the UK to suggest both someone closer to you and places you can upload to who can get you a reasonable shipping speed.

Good luck!

Can you post the image here or provide a link to the full-sized version?

Don't try to print the image you have on Flickr: What's called "original" there is (2020 x 1506) pixels.

The native file from your 450D is a lot bigger then that (4272 x 2848 pixels).
Give the customer a jpg that is not scaled down and it should print fine at A2.