On Sep 21, 2005, at 10:04 AM, Shel Belinkoff wrote:
Whenever I have prints made on the Lightjet or the Frontier, I use
300ppi
to 330ppi or so for the resolution (is that the term?) which gives
me a
nice, big, richly detailed print from scanned negatives. Using the
same
resolution with the DS results in a much smaller print size, on the
order
of 6x9. The lab people around here recommend the greater ppi for
quality
work.
I've also heard that 240ppi is acceptable, although that it's used
more for
inkjet prints.
So, what ppi do you use for what size/type prints? If all I can
get are
small prints using the recommended ppi from the digi, well, that's an
unhappy circumstance. But it seems that many of you are getting
larger
than 6x9 prints from the DSLR.
It depends to a great degree on what printer technology you're using
as well as the quality of the driver. I've been concentrating on
printing to consumer grade inkjet printers (Epson 1140, 1270 and HP
7960 specifically) and optimizing print setup for them specifically.
All of these are rated as 1440x1440 dpi capable printers.
In my experience, any output density over 360 ppi does not produce
any noticeable improvement, and between 200 and 360 ppi the
improvements are very fine *with digital capture images*. For larger
scale prints, I've gone as low as 150ppi with excellent results ...
obviously lower resolution if looked at up close, but fine for
viewing distances of 3-5 feet which are typical for a framed picture
16x20 with 10x16 inch image area (the result of printing to 11x17
paper with .5 inch borders for handling).
If the output size required goes larger than I print at home (up to
12x18 on A3 Super paper, presently), I upsample the image file and
apply some resharpening work to optimize it. I have not done this
very often as yet so it's a bit of a question mark ... I am not
familiar enough with larger format printer machinery to see how the
output will look in my head consistently. However, I've seen a lot of
24x36" prints made with 6Mpixel DSLRs that look very good.
I highlighted "with digital capture images". For scanned film images,
I find that with the same printer and print output settings on these
printers, I need about 40-50% more pixel resolution to achieve the
same apparent sharpness. For large prints, I set the bottom limits on
output density for scanned film to 225 ppi, and normally prefer to
print at 300 ppi or thereabouts.
One thing that I have found, particularly with DSLR output, is that
if you want to get what goes to paper to look anything like what you
see on screen, you need to apply greater sharpening to the print
master, to the point that it looks crappy on screen. How much, and
what kind of sharpening to use, depends on the scene dynamics.
There's a lot of magic art to making prints... ;-)
Godfrey
