Printing on A3-paper

[Leen Koper]

Robert,

The best way to save your images is at their maximum resolution.
When you start printing the images scale them up or down to the size you will be printing. When scaling up I do this in 10% steps. I read this somewhere -the results should be better this way- on the internet and it works for me, although I never compared to the results of scaling up straight from the original file to the desired size.

I print my images at A4 or smaller at 300 dpi. As I am used to the metric system instead of inches, working at 254 dpi gives me an extra check as a 30x40 image has a pixelamount of 3000x4000 etc.
Just to make life easier for me.

Moreover, these are the prefered sizes by my pro lab, so I use these for my own printing as well.

I never save these sizes as TIFF; an image of 50x75 cm will be about 115 Mb. My archive contains just only the images at their original resolution.

Leen

[Schraven Robert]

Leen,

Thank you for your reply.
Meanwhile, I went to a shop where they sell digital camera's and was told that with 3,3 megapixels you will never get a decent picture larger than A4. That answer will do me fine unless you disagree.

Tot ziens

Robert

[Leen Koper]

Robert,
If I can print excellent images at 50x70 cm (I even display them in my window) from a 6 megapixel camera, the Fuji S2 Pro, you should be able to print at least 50% of this area from 3,3 Megapixel. A picture of that size is over 3 times larger than A4.
The main problem is, due to competition, hardky anyone selling cameras uses these cameras and tries to push the limits. They don't care wether they sell cameras or sugar.

Leen

[Leen Koper]

If you want to know anything outside the forum, please call me. My number is on my website. I'll help anyone as far as my limited knowledge stretches.

I wonder why so few people outside the USA and Canada are on this forum. This is a wonderful source of valuable knowledge from friendly people.
At least, now we learn to know each other rather well.

[Beth Haney]

Robert, I can't speak for other forum members, but I can tell you one reason why I didn't reply to your post. I still don't do metric!! I know; that's a terrible thing to have to admit, but it's still true. Whenever I see terms I don't understand I run and hide. And I'm still trying to figure out what A3 paper is. (blush) Welcome to the forum, though!!

I didn't find an answer to your question about converting an image to tiff format. You might have contacted Leen directly by now, which is fine, but for the sake of others who might read this thread, I'll answer.

The image that comes from your camera - JPEG - is what's called a "lossy" format. That means it's highly compressed to conserve space, and each time you make a change to that JPEG image and resave, further compression occurs and image data is thrown away by the computer. There won't be much noticeable degradation the first couple of times this happens, but over time, the quality of the image will deteriorate. Tiff format, or PSD, is a "non lossy" format. There is no compression and all image data is retained through countless saves. Plus either of the formats will allow you to save any layers that have been added to the image through the editing process. The file sizes for tiff or psd are much bigger, but the advantage is assurance that you'll continue to get maintain quality images. Many people convert their JPEG camera images to a non-lossy format for editing and, if they feel they'll have no future need for any layers, they convert their final masterpiece back to JPEG for archiving. Some paranoics, like me, archive ALL original camera images in one place and save all edited images in tiff or PSD somewhere else.

Collectively, us forum regulars apologize for seeming to be ignoring you. Leen was just doing such a good job!

[RobertHJones]

That's an interesting question, Leen.

My guess is that it has to do with the size of the market for Elements in
the various countries. Even here in the US where I would expect the market
to be largest, we only have a relatively small number of people using the
forum on a regular basis.

Add in other factors such as language, cost, availabilty of Internet access,
etc., and the percentage will drop some more. Still, I would have expected
to have seen more international participation. Especially from Northern and
Central Europe.

Perhaps we have a host of "lurkers" reading but too shy to participate
actively.

Bob

>"Leen Koper" wrote
> I wonder why so few people outside the USA and Canada are on this forum.

[Paul L UK]

Beth

A3 is twice the size of A4.
A4 (8.27" x 11.29") is a bit bigger that Letter (8" x 11", US standard).

Paul

(You can see all the sizes in Word (or similar), do a file>page setup)

[Paul L UK]

Bob

Beat by a minute

Paul

[Chuck Snyder]

Robert, it will be interesting to hear how your A3 size pictures turn out.
The rule of thumb I've grown to use would say that a 3.3 MP camera would
only support an image of A4 size, not A3 (minimum resolution for printing of
200 pixels per inch, 2000x1600 pixel image). But Leen is the professional
and I'm a rank amateur, so go with what he says and please report back to
us!

Chuck

[Susan S.]

I've not got the ability to print on A3 paper - but I have printed images that were larger than one is "supposed" to be able to in terms of starting number of pixels by using the incremental re-sizing technique (ie upsample by 10 per cent at a time rather than in one hit until 250 or so ppi at the desired size is reached - and I can't remember where I read that on the net either!) followed by careful unsharp masking. It works very well for images that have had special effects done to them (watercolour or sketch type effects - some of these have to be done at low resolution to get the effect to work properly). For photographs you need a pin sharp original and I haven't tried more than doubling the size (linear dimension). It also depends on how fussy you are, how good your printer is etc.

Interestingly it only seems to work well with digicam images - scanned in images result in garbage. (I've also seen that referred to on the net)
I was trying to think about the logic behind the ten per cent at a time resize. With simple averaging interpolation it wouldn't make a difference - but with non-linear interpolation it would make a difference - but I wouldn't care to have to work out the maths to work out what it is!

Susan S

[Susan S.]

I've never really done a comparison of upscaling using the ten percent increments before - just used it on faith. I just tried it - It makes some difference on-screen (didn't try print). If I go from 180 to 300 ppi in one hit, then there is a sort of softened but still pixellated effect, (like looking at the original image at 200 per cent) which shows up badly in some areas, in some images after USM. If I go up at ten per cent increments this pixellation is much less evident in some images - I can put more unsharp masking on and get a cleaner reult (and if I used an edge mask on the USM it would be better still) I'm not sure that there isn't a slightly larger degree of softening using the ncremental upscaling however. Both observations make some sort of sense when I think about what the process is likely to be doing (but not enough sense to explain it coherently..!)

Susan S.

[Chuck Snyder]

Susan, I liked your earlier explanation re the nonlinearity of the
interpolation - works for me! Thanks for sharing your experiment...

[Leen Koper]

Today I will be delivering a framed image (the last one in my baby gallery); its size is 50x50cm (20x20 inches). Its original size is about 2900x2900 pixels as it is cropped from an horizontal shot from my Fuji S2 Pro camera. I upsampled it to 5000x5000 in 7 steps. No artifacts at all.
Recently a colleague of mine showed me a print of 2.40 meters wide (8 feet) from a Hasselblad with digital back. It looked absolutely stunning!
BTW His gallery is really worth visitingit is rather extreme, but extremely good photography. You can find his images at http:[url]www.//hetportret.nl[/url]

Leen

[Leen Koper]

Today I will be delivering a framed image (the last one in my baby gallery); its size is 50x50cm (20x20 inches). Its original size is about 2900x2900 pixels as it is cropped from an horizontal shot from my Fuji S2 Pro camera. I upsampled it to 5000x5000 in 7 steps. No artifacts at all.
Recently a colleague of mine showed me a print of 2.40 meters wide (8 feet) from a Hasselblad with digital back. It looked absolutely stunning!
BTW His gallery is really worth visitingit is rather extreme, but extremely good photography. You can find his images at http:[url]www.//hetportret.nl[/url]

Leen

Sorry. The right URL should read <http://www.hetportret.nl> of course.
I apologise; it 's 6 o'clock in the morning and I should go to work all ready. Still a little asleep.

Leen

[Schraven Robert]

Leen,

Quickly nipped over to your friends website to have a look.
Very nice and refreshing, definitely not an impressionist by heart.

May be one day and with a lot of help of PE I will be able to make pictures half the expressive quality his pictures have.

Robert

[RobertHJones]

Leen,

Thank you for the link to Henk's site. Very interesting work, he is very
talented.

I do prefer your style of wedding photography though.

Bob

[Susan S.]

Leen - it' s interesting that when I see people discussing upsizing of digital camera images, practical photographers who actually have to sell good quality large images to make a living are the ones who say this can be done - and they should know! (if it didn't work people wouldn't pay for them!) To see the slight distortions that the resizing made in my experiment, I had to look at them at 100 per cent on the screen - they weren't noticeable at all at print size (whether I went up in one hit or incrementally).

Robert - the amount of space your image takes up on the storage medium is controlled by the number and characteristics of the pixels, and the degree of (in your case) JPG compression. At the same level of compression, some images seem to take up a lot more space than others, due to the colour range, contrast etc. They will take up the space that they need to take up; giving them more space won't halp any. The only way that you could increase the amount of information is to reduce the amount of JPG compression - always use the least compressed (super fine or whatever ) that your camera offers, or if the camera allows you to, use a format that doesn't involve lossy compression, such as RAW.
Susan S.

[Chuck Snyder]

Leen, thanks! Guess I should stop criticizing upsampling; it's just been
hard for me to let go of the concept that a pixel not captured by the
camera, created by a mathematical algorithm, is a 'bad' pixel...!

Chuck

[Beth Haney]

Leen, thanks from me, too, for the information about incremental upsizing. Like Chuck, I've been avoiding it like the plague. Until this post if I'd ever even heard of "the 10% thing", I sure hadn't considered that it would have any effect on the quality of a resize upwards. Susan wouldn't want to do the math (and I couldn't!) but my brain can get a global idea of how doing this would more tightly control the placement of those made up pixels. Now why didn't I think of that?!

I'd posted a comment yesterday about how every time the forum gets a new member we all learn something new. Yep. You just proved it.

And now I can go back to those safely archived original JPEGs and do a little experimenting. See people? This is why we NEVER disturb an original!

[Raymond Robillard]

Happy birthday to you ))

Ray