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View Full Version : printing above 300dpi, where (and why)?



Laron
5-Feb-2013, 04:33
Hi, can any of you recommend where I could print higher quality then the usual/general 300dpi?
Is it worth it at all, what do you think?
Though I see pretty nice prints in 300 dpi, just wondering if I print in A3 I loose a lot of details by downsampling my original scan... would be wonderful to keep all that.

a recommendation for this kind of print-shop possibly within Europe or more likely Germany/Switzerland would be very much appreciated!
thanks a lot in advance and any idea welcome!
(sorry if there was already topics on this, at least I couldnt find..)
Aron

bob carnie
5-Feb-2013, 06:05
Any Lambda lab in Europe can print your files at 400ppi.

You would only see the difference in very small type btw.

Laron
5-Feb-2013, 07:02
thanks for the tip, it helped! :)
I found one seems like very cool with reasonable prices and "best" quality: www.whitewall.com
Im curious to see the difference for the same image printed only in A3...

mortensen
6-Feb-2013, 16:01
Grieger in Düsseldorf prints for Gursky, Massimo Vitali etc... HSL Digital (also in Düsseldorf) prints for Axel Hütte, Candida Höfer and so forth... just a thought

... but wouldn't you need a loupe to perceive detail greater than 300dpi?

Ken Lee
6-Feb-2013, 16:27
For a while I tried printing at higher than 360dpi on my Epson printer, but discovered that it took more work to properly sharpen the images, and as a result the image quality was actually lower.

Lachlan 717
6-Feb-2013, 16:30
A friend of mine does commercial sign writing, and has 3 A1+ printers (2 Rolands and a Mutoh).

He recently changed to printing at higher DPIs as he found that it used less ink. Something to do with the dot depth (height) being greater on lower DPI than high.

Not specifically related to your question, but something to ponder for those home printing!

paulr
6-Feb-2013, 16:55
He recently changed to printing at higher DPIs as he found that it used less ink. Something to do with the dot depth (height) being greater on lower DPI than high.

I haven't done this experiment personally, but a couple of others have found the opposite result on epson printers ... slightly higher ink use at 720ppi than at 360. It would all come down to the algorithm the driver uses to determine the final dots.


With inkjet, it may be best to follow the paper manufacturer's recommendations. The only papers I've used that come with recommendation to use 720ppi are perfectly smooth RC papers. Even the gloss baryta papers say 360. In the couple of side by side tests I've done with fiber based baryta papers, I could see no difference in fine detail between the two settings (these were images that had detail above 720ppi). I saw slightly smoother tones and more accurate tonal rendering at 360. I'm guessing this is because the manufacturer made the ICC curves at 360, finding no advantage to going higher on this paper.

A 300ppi image will resolve up to 6 lp/mm, and since it's digital it can do so at very high contrast. This allows a very sharp, detailed rendering—with a good image and proper sharpening it will resemble a contact print. It is possible, if you have good eyes and excellent lighting, and are looking at an image with very high contrast, high frequency information, to discern details up to around 11 lp/mm. However, doing so is largely a clinical exercise. Study after study has found that detail finer than 5lp/mm is of little importance to our eyes. It is barely discernible, and when it is soft (likely) it can have the opposite of the desired effect—looking more like fuzz than like detail, and lowering the percieved contrast of the more important detail in the 1 to 5 lp/mm range.

Higher resolutions can be more important with line art and type, or occasionally, to prevent aliasing on sharp lines that are just fractions of a degree off of vertical or horizontal. I haven't seen this kind of aliasing in years ... it's possible that newer inkjet dot algorithms have taken care of the problem.

ruckusman
6-Feb-2013, 17:19
FYI the Epsons and the other large format printers using Epson print heads, Mimaki, Mutoh & Roland, all have native resolutions based around 360 DPI.

The heads have the nozzles spaced at either 1/180" or IIRC 1/360" for the latest printers.
So for the Y axis -> paper advance direction it takes two passes with a 1/180" advance in between to give 360 DPI. The X axis resolution is determined by the cariage speed and nozzle firing rates plus the number of passes. It's quite an impressive achievement to get that all happening with suficient accuracy without sacrificing too much speed.

It's amazing how much control the Professional RIPS have over the large format machines and some Epsons, for example carriage speed is controllable and in addition you can set multiple passes for different resoutions, plus drying times at the end of each carriage pass.

The result is putting down heavier ink loads for less dot gain than would be possible with less passes, allowing a larger gamut, higher dmax and better resolution.

Anyway IIRC normal RA-4 paper has a resolution of ~250 DPI, though I don't remmeber where I read this, and it was likely for optical enlargement.
Lasers or minute LED's used for exposing halide based paper may augment this number, it wold make sense actually otherwise why would the lightjet et al. have been manufactured to give 400 DPI.

Seeing the differences at proper viewing distances -> that's another matter...

peace out

Glenn

paulr
6-Feb-2013, 20:34
Resolution numbers of analog materials are quite arbitrary. There is no hard cutoff; contrast simply diminishes toward the noise floor as the spatial frequency goes up. If we're looking at an old fashioned resolution test pattern, we have to determine at what point the pattern vanishes. This will depend on lighting and the eyes of the person looking. At any rate, the information isn't very useful, because detail that's anywhere near this "extinction resolution" will have such low contrast as to be insignificant, from a photographic point of view. It will be mush.

I would imagine that RA4 material would be able to resolve very high frequencies, but it's possible that you'd be in mush territory much past 250lpi. I would think you'd see limits of the enlarging optics (if you're printing that way) long before you run into limits of the paper.

sanking
6-Feb-2013, 21:37
In my testing of targets with several Epson printers (7600, 3800, 3880) I found that the Epson driver can not take advantage of any file larger than 360 dpi. You can send it 720 dpi or 1440 dpi, but the resolution will still be no more than 360 dpi. If you print with QTR, however, you can send files up to 720 dpi and see the discrimination on the print. My tests were on Epson enhanced matte.

Sandy

Noah B
7-Feb-2013, 08:08
Native resolution of the printer is important to take into consideration. You can print as large as you want as long as you keep the print resolution in sync with the resolution of the printer and make sure bicubic auto is on.

Drew Wiley
7-Feb-2013, 12:49
Not a direct answer, but I had an interesting conversation two days ago with a fellow who had been
pretty involved with the development of nano-pigments in Europe. These in my opinion would constitute the holy grail of color printing, but as I suspected, they still have not be able to mfg true
process colors. But it is exciting to know that they recognize the commercail potential of do so - incredibly small truly light-permanent transparent pigments! But at a certain point thus far, there is just
no way around organic dyes (which in fact are a significant component of inkjet inks, namely, pigments
which are really dye lakes). These kinds of nano-pigments have various commecial usages, but with
regards to printing applications today, just certain specialized industrial uses on extremely polished and prepped surfaces. If they ever do unlock primary colors, bye-bye inkjet as we currently know it!

Valdecus
7-Feb-2013, 22:47
The native resolution of Epson printers is 360 dpi whereas Canon and HP are using 300 dpi print heads. If the file has a resolution of less than 360 dpi (in case of Epson) or 300 dpi (in case of HP/Canon), then the printer driver/printer will upsample to 360 dpi or 300 dpi, and likely introduce artifacts. Thus, some sources suggest using either 300 dpi or 360 dpi as the ideal resolution for the files to be printed.

As the printing module in Lightroom is very sophisticated, I usually print out of Lightroom most of the time. Here you can set the software (Lightroom) to upsample to a fixed resolution (i.e. 360 dpi in case of my Epson printer). The upsampling algorithms in Lightroom are much more refined than those in standard print drivers, so you will see the difference here.

If the resolution of the image when printed in a certain size falls above 360 dpi (which is the case when you've scanned film with a high resolution or are using high resolution cameras such as the Nikon D800 or MF backs), Jeff Schewe (author and co-author of various books on Photoshop, image sharpening and color management, as well as printing guru) recommends upsampling to 720 dpi (or 600 dpi for Canon(HP) in Lightroom. In addition to that (and when using a pro level Epson printer), he recommends setting the Printer Settings > Output Resolution in Lightroom to "Super Photo - 2880 dpi", uncheck "Highspeed" and check "Finest Detail". In my experience, this really makes a difference when using Lightroom as your "print engine".

Jeff Schewe has written an interesting article with samples to prove his findings here:
http://www.digitalphotopro.com/technique/workflow/the-right-resolution.html

You may need to follow a different strategy when using RIPs such as ColorBytes ImagePrint or others, though.

Cheers,
Andreas

Laron
13-Feb-2013, 08:33
wow, thank you all for the useful comments! there are some very interesting aspects I was not aware at all...
seems like once its about photography, things gets denser around Dusseldorf...

Ken Lee
13-Feb-2013, 09:16
Jeff Schewe has written an interesting article with samples to prove his findings here:
http://www.digitalphotopro.com/technique/workflow/the-right-resolution.html


According to that article (since many of us use Photoshop):

"If you print from Photoshop, you'll need to do some additional steps to take advantage of upsampled printing. You'll need to use the Image Size command to upsample your image to the desired output resolution."

.. which unless I am mistaken, means we simply need to resize the image accordingly, which is probably what many of us already do.

Are we correct in presuming that Photoshop does as good a job at up-sampling as Lightroom ?

bob carnie
13-Feb-2013, 09:30
I would think upsampling in Photoshop to be every bit as good as upsampling in Lightroom


According to that article (since many of use Photoshop):

"If you print from Photoshop, you'll need to do some additional steps to take advantage of upsampled printing. You'll need to use the Image Size command to upsample your image to the desired output resolution."

.. which unless I am mistaken, means we simply need to resize the image accordingly, which is probably what many of us already do.

Are we correct in presuming that Photoshop does as good a job at up-sampling as Lightroom ?

mortensen
13-Feb-2013, 09:33
... maybe even the same algorithm ;)

Valdecus
13-Feb-2013, 12:24
... maybe even the same algorithm ;)

Almost. As Jeff states in the above mentioned article, LR applies a slightly modified upsampling (and downsampling) routine in comparison to Photoshop:
"In fact, Adobe Photoshop Lightroom resampling is a hybrid Bicubic algorithm that interpolates between Bicubic and Bicubic Smoother for upsampling and Bicubic and Bicubic Sharper for downsampling."

Cheers,
Andreas

John Rodriguez
18-Feb-2013, 20:52
Currently Lightroom supposedly does a better job with uprezzing for the reason that Valdecus mentioned. I expect the next version of PS will have a similar routine added.

paulr
18-Feb-2013, 21:00
If there are differences I bet they're subtle. I used to not be able to tell the difference between a file uprezed in photoshop and one eprezzed by the Epson driver. I finally found a site that showed side by side examples. It was the kind of comparison where I literallly had to be shown where to look and what to look for. And these were of very high resolution scans of inkjet prints. I don't think this kind of difference will be noticeable under normal viewing conditions except under unusual circumstances. I generally now interpolate to 360ppi in photoshop or lightroom, but it's on general principle.

Brian K
18-Feb-2013, 21:11
With Epson printers you'll find increasingly finer detail at 360, 480, and 720 dpi depending on the paper. It is my understanding that the epson will automatically do an interpolation to 360 using it's own software but it's just not as good as doing it beforehand.

On Mac, Ben Vista Photozoom 5 is an excellent interpolation program and will most likely give you better results than PS or LR. The current incarnation of genuine fractals, they have changed the name I believe to perfect resize, also does an excellent job.

welly
18-Feb-2013, 21:35
The native resolution of Epson printers is 360 dpi whereas Canon and HP are using 300 dpi print heads. If the file has a resolution of less than 360 dpi (in case of Epson) or 300 dpi (in case of HP/Canon), then the printer driver/printer will upsample to 360 dpi or 300 dpi, and likely introduce artifacts. Thus, some sources suggest using either 300 dpi or 360 dpi as the ideal resolution for the files to be printed.

As the printing module in Lightroom is very sophisticated, I usually print out of Lightroom most of the time. Here you can set the software (Lightroom) to upsample to a fixed resolution (i.e. 360 dpi in case of my Epson printer). The upsampling algorithms in Lightroom are much more refined than those in standard print drivers, so you will see the difference here.

If the resolution of the image when printed in a certain size falls above 360 dpi (which is the case when you've scanned film with a high resolution or are using high resolution cameras such as the Nikon D800 or MF backs), Jeff Schewe (author and co-author of various books on Photoshop, image sharpening and color management, as well as printing guru) recommends upsampling to 720 dpi (or 600 dpi for Canon(HP) in Lightroom. In addition to that (and when using a pro level Epson printer), he recommends setting the Printer Settings > Output Resolution in Lightroom to "Super Photo - 2880 dpi", uncheck "Highspeed" and check "Finest Detail". In my experience, this really makes a difference when using Lightroom as your "print engine".

Jeff Schewe has written an interesting article with samples to prove his findings here:
http://www.digitalphotopro.com/technique/workflow/the-right-resolution.html

You may need to follow a different strategy when using RIPs such as ColorBytes ImagePrint or others, though.

Cheers,
Andreas

I need to compare images I've printed on my 3880 using the Epson driver vs. QTR. I always use 2880dpi and finest detail when I use the Epson driver and I must say, the detail I'm getting from my prints at 8x10 is quite astounding considering I've scanned the negatives with a V700 scanner and I know little about sharpening images (I just play with the sharpen tool in Lightroom until, to my eyes, it looks sharp). I'm guessing I'm doing something right anyway. With QTR, the maximum DPI it'll print out at is 1440 it seems, unless I've missed a switch/button/checkbox or something else?

Still, the prints I've got out of QTR have been wonderful anyway.

John Rodriguez
18-Feb-2013, 21:37
If there are differences I bet they're subtle. I used to not be able to tell the difference between a file uprezed in photoshop and one eprezzed by the Epson driver. I finally found a site that showed side by side examples. It was the kind of comparison where I literallly had to be shown where to look and what to look for. And these were of very high resolution scans of inkjet prints. I don't think this kind of difference will be noticeable under normal viewing conditions except under unusual circumstances. I generally now interpolate to 360ppi in photoshop or lightroom, but it's on general principle.

True. Most comparisons I've seen only start to be noticeable on major uprezzing, ie 3-4x. The largest I go is an 80% uprezz, and that's only for a large print. That takes a 200 PPI native file to 360 PPI.

The nice thing about using Lightroom is it seems to do a really good job with output sharpening, so there's no need for me to create different versions for each print size (it's actually using the Pixel Genius Photo Kit Sharpener routines). I just dial up the size I need to print and let er rip.

Brian K
19-Feb-2013, 04:55
A friend of mine who is a serious master of the digital printing process, the paper companies come to him to make profiles, has shown me test printings whose incredibly fine detail blows me away. He'll hand me a piece of paper with what looks like a series of continuous fine lines on it and then hand me a loupe. In reality it's incredibly small type, almost like the micro type on US currency, which is perfectly legible and well defined. Very impressive.

sanking
19-Feb-2013, 07:11
I need to compare images I've printed on my 3880 using the Epson driver vs. QTR. I always use 2880dpi and finest detail when I use the Epson driver and I must say, the detail I'm getting from my prints at 8x10 is quite astounding considering I've scanned the negatives with a V700 scanner and I know little about sharpening images (I just play with the sharpen tool in Lightroom until, to my eyes, it looks sharp). I'm guessing I'm doing something right anyway. With QTR, the maximum DPI it'll print out at is 1440 it seems, unless I've missed a switch/button/checkbox or something else?

Still, the prints I've got out of QTR have been wonderful anyway.

I believe you have indeed missed something in setting up QTR. All of the Epson printers I have used allow for setting up with 2880 dpi and uni-directional printing. In my tests this setting allows use of files with resolution of up to 720 dpi. Whether you will see any advantage compared to the Epson driver will depend on many factors, but one of them will be the actual detail in the image file. The best procedure is to never downsize the image to less than 720 dpi, and of course in order to see the detail of 720 dpi it must be there from the beginning, either from the digital capture or film scan.

Sandy