help please with print quality issue raw to jpeg

[kiltedscotsman]

hi all
i recently took a picture in raw format , when i got to computer i used photoshop and enhanced photo then saved it as jpg it went from 24mb to under 2mb, i am wanting to print a large picture 26x 18 using loxleys but they say wont be good enough but the only print in jpg is there anyway to increase the size of the picture in mb or should the jpeg be ok for printing as it was shot on a canon 7d mark ii 20 million megapixels im really confused here any help would be very grateful

[Geoff F]

Can you supply more information about the Jpeg version. Is it full sized or cropped? How many pixels on the longest edge? What compression setting was used?

If it is full original size (somewhere around 5000 to 6000 pixels approx) and at the best quality compression it should print OK.

Some printers insist on a resolution of 300 pixels per inch but this tends to be meaningless in reality if you have sufficient pixels, because the resolution can easily be varied to suit the required print size.

[pnodrog]

This is a link I need bigger Jpegs from Tiffs to a thread that may provide answers to your question. Printers should not be using the size of a jpeg file as a way of judging it's suitability for printing. The pixel dimensions are far more informative. So if you converted to a high quality jpeg (low compression) without reducing the pixel size it should be OK.

Anyway the above thread covers it well.

[Manfred M]

Going from 24MP to 2MP, in conjunction with the error message tells me that you have resized the image somewhere in your workflow. Your 7D mk II shoots 14-bit and the jpeg conversion to 8-bit plus standard compression is likely to take you down somewhere around 8MP.

More aggessive compression will reduce file size, but will maintain the original height and width. The only way that you can get things down to 2MP is to throw away a lot more data and reduce quality (but not size) or to reduce size (therefore height and width). If you have resized the image; for instance taking the native resolution for prints of 300 or 360 dpi to something more standard for a screen, like 100 dpi, the Photoshop will give you an error message as it will have to interpolate to get the image back up to print size.

[cuilin]

Going from 24MP to 2MP, in conjunction with the error message tells me that you have resized the image somewhere in your workflow. Your 7D mk II shoots 14-bit and the jpeg conversion to 8-bit plus standard compression is likely to take you down somewhere around 8MP.

that was my initial thought as well.