Enlarging Digital Prints

How large can you go without breaking into fractals and how do the photos have to be shot/saved/processed to achieve a big enlargement?

How big do you want to go? What grain structure do you want? If your original is truly sharp (or soft) as you desire, and clean and grain free, then you can enlarge an image a lot. But your printing requirements and viewing distance matter.

In short, it depends on your output requirements and the quality of your original image.

some thoughts, <smile>

Sean

Sean DeMerchant said:

How big do you want to go? What grain structure do you want? If your original is truly sharp (or soft) as you desire, and clean and grain free, then you can enlarge an image a lot. But your printing requirements and viewing distance matter.

In short, it depends on your output requirements and the quality of your original image.

some thoughts, <smile>

Sean

Click to expand...

Thanks, Sean. I'm thinking about big. Not huge, but may 14 X 36. I'm just wondering if there's a pixel formula that determines the resolution of the enlarged print.

D

doug anderson said:

Thanks, Sean. I'm thinking about big. Not huge, but may 14 X 36. I'm just wondering if there's a pixel formula that determines the resolution of the enlarged print.

Click to expand...

It depends on too many qualitative factors. I have printed a RAW shot from a 5 MP digicam at 16x22 in (40x56 cm) with quality output. So I would expect it to be relatively easy to do with a tripod.

But a 10 or 12 MP shot with a quality lens taken with poor technique might look terrible at larger than 4x6 in (10x15 cm).

Heck, I have seen quoted specs of 9 dpi resolution on billboards (they have likely improved). Even 9 dpi resolution is viable with a large enough viewing distance.

You can look at stuff like this:

http://www.nikonlinks.com/unklbil/dof.htm

But at the end of the day, with good digital darkroom technique and a quality original you can go far. Try it and see what you like. Or take 4x6 in (10x15 cm) crops at 100% resolution and print those as resolution tests and get a feel for your tools.

What camera are you shooting with? Lenses?

enjoy,

Sean

Doug

a few weeks ago I made some big prints, 127 x 80 cm on a Lambda printer, from some shots taken with my 2 1Ds-2, 17 MP.

They look very good at a viewer distance of about 1 meter, at closer inspection I (but not the client) could recognise the used lens. Therefore, I' d weight rather the lens quality = resolution and contrast, than the Megapixels. Blowing up for big prints will show the lens weakness without remorse!

To understand correctly: MP have a influence, therefore a big print of a stitched image with 40 MP, at 170 x 80 cm looks off course better at close inspection, than the 17 MP, but I I wouldn't overvalue it. (The stich just looks perfect)

As a general rule, the above blown up picture have the look of a 50%- view in Photoshop.

Off course, your edits, RAWconversion and post in PS should be done with consideration.
Personally, I wouldn't blow up in camera-jpgs to much.

Thanks, Michael. The photos I'm thinking of enlarging are tripod shots with a Mamiya 645 scanned from a film negative. I think they'll be fine.

Doug

Doug
that shouldn't be a problem for the desired size, unless the scans are bad.