Are You Making Large Prints Well?

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 How Good are Your Prints?

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A brief outline among many offered from other great photographers out there.

How many times have you taken a picture that you or someone else wants printed larger, and your first reaction is "What are the limits in size?" Its an art of science if you will, and it takes some understanding, but it boils down to some pretty simple techniques. So for the sake of brevity and simplicity, I'd like to give direction for the non-technical among us. Because I am familiar with the Adobe Products I'll be describing this with their software terms.

First you can't start with an image that is not already sharp from a native resolution standpoint, that is, from within your camera. So take the image you want to print large, open it in Camera Raw, make no sharpening or luminous noise reduction, zoom to 100% and if you satisfied that your focus is sharp, proceed, if not try another shoot or use another image file. Don't expect perfection, just a reasonably sharp focus on the subject within your image. We will address sharpening later.

Let's say for the sake of this discussion you are using a 12 MP file, it could be less or more, matters not. Open into Photoshop, create a Background Copy, choose Image> Image Size, unclick Resample, then change your Document Size to Per Cent and up-res to 200% (Since you are already at 100% you are doubling the output size.), then pick 200 resolution and reclick Resample, then make sure you have Bicubic Smoother chosen for enlargements. Click OK. Now as with any up-res you'll want to sharpen. Use Unsharp Mask unless you are fond of paying for other tools, and push the Amount to as much as you need, keep the Ratio below 1.0 and keep Threshold at zero.

Because I started with a 4368x2912 pixel dimension my output will now be at roughly 16x20, however because I shot this with a full frame Canon 5DMII the ration places my print at exactly 14.56x21.84 or 15x22, close enough. At this point you can preview it at Print Size, and preview print, but you'll only know for sure after printing.

You may be able to enlarge up to 400% however there is a size limitation to up-ressing and it is not limited only to size of image file, it is also limited to the eye, the camera settings, the sharpness of original focus, the print size, the distance one stands from a print. The further you push the interpolation, or up-ressing, the more pixelation occurs, so be mindful of that. you are not going to enlarge a 8 MP image to 30x40" with any degree of success, if you are concentrating on sharpness. Some images, I have a few favorites, don't need sharpness. But here we are focusng on sharpness in print. Best of success to you and I hope this helps.

Is this the only successful way to produce a larger print? No, but I have found it to be of help if I am careful about not asking too much from my enlargement process. It should be said that if you are setting out to produce a sharp image for a large print all the precautions about the use of a tripod should be followed. Otherwise this method will give you some interpolation success in up-ressing for enlargement.

Have you found another method which works well for you?

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