Help on UpResing for 20 ft. Print

[illy]

Hello everyone. I hope that some of you can help me out.

My company is opening a retail store for RV and Camping equipment. We are trying to create 6 large posters that will be 20 ft. Wide by 7 ft. Tall around the walls inside the store. I have images that are 4.6 inches Wide at 1800 dpi. I know this is a HUGE Up-Res from such a small image. Is it possible to do it without too much loss?

We purchased Genuine Fractal and have been messing around with it. The printer we are working with needs the file at half the print size at 300 dpi, so this would be 10 feet by 3.5 feet. I simply took the original image, cropped it to the correct proportions to match the final image requirements, and slowly began to up the image size with Genuine Fractal at about 150% at a time. We then gave the printer the final image for a test print, but the results were pretty dissapointing.

My question is, are we going about this the correct way? If not, what way should we do it? Any tips, suggestions and help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance guys.

[Ted Harris]

illy, some moe questions before I attempt to answer your original question. What is the size of the original film? How was it scanned, what scanner and at what resolution? Or, is theoriginal a digital file and if so how was it captured?

Without this info on the original image and the capture it is very difficult to give you ameaningful answer. The size you are shooting for could be very difficult so I need the info to give you a sound answer. Further, how big is the space where these will be displayed ... important to know how far away from the viewers the images wil be on average.

[illy]

Thanks for the reply already Ted.

As for the original files, they are digitally manipulated images that were given to me at the max size the photographer had them at, which was 4.6 inches Wide at 1800 dpi. The height is cropped anyways, so I am guessing it doesn't matter whether or not I give you that dimension. As for how the digital was captured, I can not be too sure how they were prepared and edited. The file format of the images is .tif and they were around 150-200 MBs in file size. The images we are using can be seen at http://www.andyandersonphoto.com under 'New Work -> Go RV'.

The posters themselves will be displayed at about 10 feet above the ground and they will span 20' wide across the wall and 7' high.

I hope that this is enough information for you because that is the extent of my knowledge on the files themselves.

Thanks again. Looking forward to your reply.

[Bruce Watson]

We are trying to create 6 large posters that will be 20 ft. Wide by 7 ft. Tall around the walls inside the store. I have images that are 4.6 inches Wide at 1800 dpi. I know this is a HUGE Up-Res from such a small image. Is it possible to do it without too much loss?

That's 1800ppi * 4.6 = 8280 pixels, 8280p/84 in ~ 100 ppi. Not too bad as long as people will be decently far away and it sounds like that will be the case. Sample prints viewed at arms length won't look good however. You'll need to judge them at the closest distance one of your patrons could get which should be considerably farther away than arms length.

Just to clarify, you shouldn't loose anything at all. What you'll end up doing is spreading the information you have over a fairly large distance. You'll be diluting it, if you will.

At the risk of sounding officious, I strongly suggest that you have someone with experience making big prints from less than optimum files do the work. Screwing up a print this size is going to be costly. Why isn't the photographer in question making or directing the making of the prints? Who better to know what it's supposed to look like than the photographer?

[illy]

Thanks for your input Bruce. I have tried to contact Andy Anderson Photography and they told us that they have never done prints that big and do not know the best way to prepare the images to the size we need them. The best advice he gave us was to open them in photoshop and start upressing them manually through the 'image size' window. Too bad that wasn't very helpful to us.

Anyways, the process in which I used to begin upresing the images was opening one of the image files in Photoshop (4.616 inches x 3.637 inches at 1800 PPI), then going to 'image -> image size' then unchecking 'Resample Image' then setting the PPI to 300 which makes the document 27.697 inches Wide automatically. From there, I cut it down to 27 inches Wide, then crop the image to exactly 27 inches x 9.45 inches (exact proportion to the final size of 20 feet x 7 feet). From there, I open up the Genuine Fractal plugin and then start increasing the image size at about 150% at a time until it is finally 10 feet x 3.5 feet.

I'm wondering if I am doing the right thing by setting the original image resolution to 300 at the start with the 'Resample Image' unchecked.

Anyways, any other help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you guys once again.

[illy]

Thanks for the helpful tips on sharpening Chris. It is much appreciated.

[phil sweeney]

Thanks for your input Bruce. I have tried to contact Andy Anderson Photography and they told us that they have never done prints that big and do not know the best way to prepare the images to the size we need them. The best advice he gave us was to open them in photoshop and start upressing them manually through the 'image size' window. Too bad that wasn't very helpful to us.

Anyways, the process in which I used to begin upresing the images was opening one of the image files in Photoshop (4.616 inches x 3.637 inches at 1800 PPI), then going to 'image -> image size' then unchecking 'Resample Image' then setting the PPI to 300 which makes the document 27.697 inches Wide automatically. From there, I cut it down to 27 inches Wide, then crop the image to exactly 27 inches x 9.45 inches (exact proportion to the final size of 20 feet x 7 feet). From there, I open up the Genuine Fractal plugin and then start increasing the image size at about 150% at a time until it is finally 10 feet x 3.5 feet.

I'm wondering if I am doing the right thing by setting the original image resolution to 300 at the start with the 'Resample Image' unchecked.

Anyways, any other help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you guys once again.

I know of one poster shop that downsizes any file to 90 dpi for output, regardless of your image file. I guess their point is they make posters not print art. If you change your original to 100 dpi that would yield 5.4 feet by 6.9 feet. Now that would probably make a decent poster but smaller than your desired output. I looked at genuine fractals before though I do not use it, I think you will find that after you make your file a gen frac file you only use the gen frac controls thereafter. Try printing a small area for proofs.

[Ron Marshall]

You might want to print a 16x20 crop at the final poster resolution to see how it will look at that resolution.

[illy]

Thanks for all of your input.

As for proofs, we did get a strip from each poster that measured 7 feet tall by about 2 feet wide. I'm asking for help because they did not turn out very well and the pixelation was very noticeable from a distance of 10-15 feet.

So, from the input, it seems like there is no real way for me to do it and only a professional would know the correct steps to take. If I am missing or messing up a step anywhere, it would be great if someone would let me know because we spent a fortune on purchasing these images to begin with, and we would rather not spend more trying to get another person to resize these images if it is possible to do in-house.

Anyways, thank you all again for taking the time to read this post. It has been very helpful thus far.

[SAShruby]

10-15 feet away? That is 3 to 5 meters only. If you take a picture 30x40 inches or paint, ideal distance is 2 - 3 meters. I would suggest smaller image at higher ppi or longer distance. Other suggestion would be not to crop it until final width size and then crop top and bottom.

Anyway my calculation shows 4.616 * 1800 ppi / 240 (20*12inch) = 34.62 PPI, which is too low. Even if you would size it to 10 feet wide you will get 69 ppi and then you need to work with Genuine fractal to increase it by 100%. I think it is too much for fractal increase and having same sharpenss and lok. I would not got under 70-80 ppi from 10-15 feet view distance.