Pixel Size When Printing

[Polar01]

Is your good freind a photographer or printer, always look from where the info comes from. A large number of photos that are framed are mounted, with a matte. A photo with a 2 in matte and it 8" x 12" would need a 12" x 16" frame. Very few people just frame the photo with no matting, a precut matte from a say a craft type store that fits a 18" x 24" frame would have a opening for a 12" x 18" photo (your 2/3 fromat). The standard size you print is that size that is most pleasing to you, for me it is 12" x 18" then again I have a 17" wide printer.

[Geoff F]

Hello,

I am confused about standing printing size. A good freind tells me that a 8X12 is the official size for a professional printed picture if you respect the ratio witch is 2/3 in ma camera? But I cannot find frames of that size at my local store?
Is there such a thing about "standard sizes"?

Another simple question without a simple answer I'm afraid, Louise.

Yes, frames tend to come in various standard sizes; which may or may not be easily obtainable near where you live.

In Europe, for example, we tend to mostly use either the old imperial sizes like 10 x 8 ins including multiples or sub divisions thereof. And the metric A4 sizes where the basic starting point is 297 x 210 mm. 8 x 12 ins. can also sometimes be found here.

So you should be able to find a variety of 'standard sizes' but you may need to look out for them.

The first thing to remember is that with virtually all editing software you have the ability to crop your scenes to a different size ratio; and that can sometimes improve a shot.

When it comes to framing a print you now have quite a few options. A surrounding border mat is often used to provide a little space between the frame and print, and to keep the glass from actually touching the print. You can sometimes find these with different sizes between top/bottom and side edges.

The potential problem is that these cover part of the print. Although by attaching your print to a backing sheet this coverage can be reduced to just a small area.

The alternative, and simple answer is to have a print which is 'full frame' and goes from edge to edge although this looses the gap inside the glass. This is to some extent a matter of personal choice.

When printing my own images I often create a print to paper size which simply includes a margin of plain paper between the print size and paper edge then use this instead of an inserted mat.

This doesn't allow for a space between the glass and print but in reality I don't find this is a problem under most conditions.

[wlou]

Thank you for your answer, may be one has to recut the photo to fit. I think the idea was to find a print size that fit easily into a frame.

[Jack32]

300ppi is excellent for up to 8x10” print size.
_____________________

Booklet printing Toronto

[jcuknz]

I'm sorry...but all of you have missed my point. I am asking a question about pixels in regards to PRINTING.

I would suggest that you organize your file size to match the size of the print using the 300dpi/ppi standard. This means that a 6x4 print needs 1800x1200 pixels and a 20x16 print would need 6000x4800 pixels. You will find people suggesting lower figures [ dpi/ppi ] which may work depending on the printing method being used, but for dot printing on a home printer the 300 dpi is the safe standard. I assume this is what you are planning to do. Note ... if you do not have enough pixels out of the camera, or your crop, your computer program me will 'interpolate', invent extra pixels, for you provided in the re-size menu you enter the dpi first and then the print size. This is usually quite satisfactory if the process is not pushed too much.

[jcuknz]

In the camera club world there is a common standard that the mount should not be bigger than 20x16 and people frequently mount their prints on a board this size without a 'matte'. I have seen a 35mm contact print mounted on such a board but you should organise the print to suit the subject matter and mount it on the board ... guideline I follow is side and top same space and bottom x1.5, or greater.
Spoiling your image to conform to some arbitary 'standard' size is very silly IMO. I suspect that people who use mattes frequently do this.

[Manfred M]

I see that thsi is an old post, but there is definitely some misinformation here. The Native resolution for HP and Canon is 300 dpi. Native resolution for Epson is 360 dpi. For some reason known only to the printer manufacturers, this information is not readily found without doing a fair bit of searching on the internet.

While printers are technically a variant of CMYK devices, their drivers are designed to take RGB input. If you are planning to print, use AdobeRGB colour space as it was designed to provide a monitor gamut that very closely matches the printer colour, much more so than sRGB. This of course assumes your monitor accurately reproduces this colour space. My monitor for instance does 100% of sRGB and is just under 100% of AdobeRGB. I've played with teh ProPhoto colour space, but my results have not been that great.

To minimize the risk of undesirable artifacts and issues from downsizing and running through the print engine, the final steps of my workflow are resizing the image to actual print size at 360ppi (I have an Epson printer). I do my final sharpening at 100% resolution to ensure that my sharpening is correct and the printer does not have to do any interpolation. I always print out of Photoshop, and when doing colour, I let it manage my colours. In B&W I find doing this results in a bit of a colour cast at times and I use the printer's print engine instead.

[Colin Southern]

I do my final sharpening at 100% resolution to ensure that my sharpening is correct and the printer does not have to do any interpolation.

Hi Manfred,

Unfortunately, doing it this way doesn't guarantee a superior sharpening result (nor does it probably give an inferior one I might add). The bottom line for sharpening is that what we're after is really a "visually optimal" result which may vary from a "technically optimal" (or "theoretically optimal") one.

By and large - and to keep file sizes down - I generally don't up-sample anything above 180 DPI; the interpolation by the printer driver produces a "visually indistinguishable" result. Bottom line is that in most cases what's coming off the printer is just too darn small for the eye to be able to interpret at an individual pixel level.

[Colin Southern]

I would suggest that you organize your file size to match the size of the print using the 300dpi/ppi standard. This means that a 6x4 print needs 1800x1200 pixels and a 20x16 print would need 6000x4800 pixels. You will find people suggesting lower figures [ dpi/ppi ] which may work depending on the printing method being used, but for dot printing on a home printer the 300 dpi is the safe standard. I assume this is what you are planning to do. Note ... if you do not have enough pixels out of the camera, or your crop, your computer program me will 'interpolate', invent extra pixels, for you provided in the re-size menu you enter the dpi first and then the print size. This is usually quite satisfactory if the process is not pushed too much.

It's often a "moot point" because at the end of the day, only so many pixels of information was captured by the camera. If the amount of information captured equates to more than 300 PPI then there's no penalty (apart from file size), and if it equates to less than 300 PPI then there's nothing that can be done that will add additional detail to the file (you can't add in later something that wasn't captured in the first place). In the latter case, it simply comes down to whether it's the post-production program that interpolates the data to an intermediate resolution in preparation for the print driver interpolating is some more (in most cases), or whether the print driver simply interpolates the entire presented file in one fell swoop.

In my experience, one may as well just let the printer driver do it; you end up with a smaller file to save & store, and the results are usually visually indistinguishable.

[Manfred M]

With a 36MP sensor, at 300 ppi, I'm looking at a native size of 16" x 24" / 42cm x 62cm. I tend to downsample, not upsample and I do find that the contrast can go up when I do that operation, hence my workflow.

From a purely technical standpoint, I know I won't have any surprises when I print at native resolution if I do the size matching. You could be right, but if that is true, I might as well work in jpgs because the bit depth of a printer is probably around 6 bits per channel as I don't need all the colour data in the RAW image.

[jcuknz]

If you have/had been on the net for some years and subscribed to blog-sites devoted to printing the info about the native resolution of different printers would be known to you. The theory was that it was better to have the NR divided by whole numbers than no and decimal. so 300dpi is an eighth of 2400 while 360dpi is of 2880. From memory the first was HP and second another make of those days. Epsom?

[ggt]

I seem to have everything at 300dpi. I believe that is what the various printing sites I use require or "suggest". So, I just kept it as default to make things easier.

[Bm7b5]

Here are a couple of sites that I hope will answer your question simply:

http://www.owlsweb.info/ce/past/best...pixelchart.pdf

http://planetcalc.com/1688/

http://www.photokaboom.com/photograp...ors.htm#Pixels


It's not that difficult, but some relatively simple math, understanding the difference between the visual quality of an image printed at 330dpi/200dpi/150dpi.

Personally, I like to stick to 300 to insure my image shows what I captured.

I like to print large wall hanging prints on canvas, or for framing, for art.

For lesser, 200dpi may be ok.


My $ 0.02. YMMV.

[Colin Southern]

Personally, I like to stick to 300 to insure my image shows what I captured.

Unfortunately that then means that the number of pixels left after capture and cropping dictates the final size of the image. I'd rather have an image that was the size I wanted, so long as any degradation due to the resolution wasn't obvious at the intended viewing distance.

[Bm7b5]

Unfortunately that then means that the number of pixels left after capture and cropping dictates the final size of the image. I'd rather have an image that was the size I wanted, so long as any degradation due to the resolution wasn't obvious at the intended viewing distance.

I try as hard as I can to do most of my photography from behind the camera, including cropping.

That should DEFINITELY not be construed as "I never crop in post", but by and large, not so much.

I definitely would hope not to end up in the situation you suggest, and would agree whole heatedly with your perspective of the image being the discriminator, since, well, it is a visual medium so, messing with the volume isn't gonna help....

[Black Pearl]

Forget all about the size and sign up for Dropbox. Auto upload from any file on your computer and easy to send family members links.

[Bm7b5]

Forget all about the size and sign up for Dropbox. Auto upload from any file on your computer and easy to send family members links.

I think the question at issue is related to the printing of images, and the maximun associated print size you can get from a given number of pixels making up an image. File size in and of itself, and digital sharing are simply not a problem in this day and age, but the printing issue is.

[Black Pearl]

I read that the question was about sharing images with family - leave the files as they are, use an online host and the person downloading it can print it any size they want.

You don't need a specific amount of pixels for a specific size of print - all you need is enough pixels for the pint to look good at a sensible viewing distance.....all modern digital cameras can manage that.
Over complicating things by quoting 300ppi (an offset printing figure and nothing what so ever to do with home printing or commercial highstreet lab printing) or going down the route of resizing with software, interpolation methods and God only knows what else is pointless.

[Bm7b5]

I am having a hard time finding a photo sharesite that will keep my photos at the original size
(approximately 3000 x 2000) which has led me to this question....exactly what pixel size does a photo need to be for optimal printing?

Are my photos at 3000 x 2000 overkill, or do they produce a better photo? I SHOOT all my photos at the highest JPEG camera setting (too newbie for RAW...but hopefully one day). I know this is very important (learned by a very sad experience), but when it comes to PRINTING - is it still important to have the higest pixel count? What kind of photo print would you get at minimum requirement as compared to original size?

I use a lab service and these requirements are on their website

Minimal Pixel Sizes

4 x 6 print = 900 x 600

5 x 7 print = 1024 x 768

8 x 10 print = 1220 x 960


Thanks so much for all you smart photographers who are so willing to help newbies/dummies.

This {italicized,underlined} was what I took away as the point of the question, hence my response.

As for photo sharing sites that won't allow for original size, I'm guessing we're talking free, and the mention of Dropbox, may be valuable.

Personally, I really like and have been using SmugMug for years. Yeah, I have to pay an annual fee, but for me it isn't exorbitant, even though I'm currently unemployed and desperately seeking work, so "today" I'd say it's exorbitant, but in general, for the features they provide, I like the value. I've been away so long, I'll re-introduce my work. All stored in original size, and in a gallery format, (one of several options). By clicking, tapping, whatever your device does, you can view at 1x, 2x, 3x, or original size, view EXIF, if I've allowed, rate, comment, purchase, etc, etc, etc. big SmugMug fa. Chose it when Flickr was all the rage, and have had no reason to regret it, but once per annum, on pay up day. LOL

http://bm7b5.smugmug.com/Other/Richa...881387&k=YsEAp