Perfect Resize - Increasing the resolution of images for print - thoughts?
polycounter lvl 10
Hey guys,
I've wanted to blow up a few of my paintings to a bigger resolution so that I can print / frame them. Does anybody know which software is the best for this? I recently downloaded the trial of perfect resize and it seems to work great, but I'm wondering if there's an even better program that I should be looking into.
I've wanted to blow up a few of my paintings to a bigger resolution so that I can print / frame them. Does anybody know which software is the best for this? I recently downloaded the trial of perfect resize and it seems to work great, but I'm wondering if there's an even better program that I should be looking into.
Replies
Does anybody know a quick place to buy really cheap frames? I took a look online, and to get a 36x48 inch frame it's like 300 $...
In the United States you probably could get a frame from Walmart, Hobby Lobby, or Michael's for about $17 as well.
It would be better to capture the original images at a high resolution rather than using software to enlarge it.
thanks for the frame info!
We used that tool sometimes for texture enlargement.
You really only need 300 dpi for something around the size of a magazine, 150-175 dpi would be sufficient at 36x48
do you watch it from up close or further away most of the time?
Also a common print trick for larger banners is to basically do any image work at a lower DPI, like 75 dpi or 150 dpi depending on the size of the banner. Scale that up and then do text or any vector details at 300 dpi on top of it.
I also found a basic rule of thumb list.
20 feet greater than 20 DPI
16 feet 40 DPI or greater
12 feet 80 DPI or greater
10 feet 100 DPI or greater
8 feet 130 DPI or greater
6 feet 170 DPI or greater
4 feet 200 DPI or greater
2 feet 270 DPI or greater
1 foot 300 DPI or greater
You should't worry about lowering the DPI unless your painting has crazy detail like Andrew Jones'/Android Jones' work.
Quality is the word, not vanity lol
You are mistaken, not only for B&W images
Nowadays is very common to print photos of 21 megapixels if you own a reflex(5616x3744), or larger in a photo canvas. Of course, it depends of the quality of our printer but that's not a problem nowadays, we can buy excellent printers with usb 2.0/3.0, very very fast (who uses printers with LPT port?).
I have cool canon pixma, and i don't have any problems printing images of 25000px+.
Hehe yeah, this conversation has nothing to do with what your printer may or may not be capable of printing. B5 is tiny compared to a 36x48. 1200dpi at 36x48 = 43,200x57,600, or 2.5 gigapixels. Maybe if you're taking photos with a gigapan, lol!
Also 1000+ to Zac's post on viewing distance, you do NOT need 300 DPI when you're 5-10 feet away from a print.
this is wrong - DPI doesn't work like this. And a colour image is just four black and white images.
The DPI you send to the printer is not the DPI the printer prints at. Most printers will use a line screen to convert your pixels into a number of separations (eg channels). The line screens are essentially black and white images with different size dots on them.
To print a range of sizes of dots you need to take the output DPI of a printer and divide it by the number of tones you want to represent (usually 256). So the smallesst Lines Per Inch you can print is divided by the tones you can print. So even a very high output printer that can do 2000 DPI might only support a line screen of 70-100 LPI. Which means you don't really need more than 2-3 times the line screen to print an image.
Here's a nifty article about it:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/symbiartic/2012/05/14/dots-spots-and-pixels-whats-in-a-name/
with an image:
this assumes your printer is a four colour process printer (most are) and not something that uses paint, die-sublimation, or a plotter, or using a stochastic screen.
This is the same as with TV and their recent debate of 4K and 8K. There are plenty of people that do not appreciate the difference between 4k and 1080p at a certain distance. I'm customed to use my xperia S with 1280x720p in a tiny screen, and man... i would like to have that level of sharpness, clarity and definition on my 24" screen monitor.
This could be compared to the Mega pixels debate of a camera... i remember people saying that 5MP were more than enough.
Or 6/8 GB ram instead of 16... or playing a game at 24/30 fps vs 60 fps vs 120 fps( (for this last one, we need a 3D monitor). There's a huge difference.
And putting another example, a workstation with a dual xeon with 20 threads and 64GB ram vs a single Quadcore with 8 threads and 8 GB ram... With all this, i mean that you should notice that each person is a world... and not all people has the same needs. All this is very subjetive.
When i print a 1200px image onto an A4 format... i sadly notice the bricks (pixels). There are not enough pixels per inch. The ideal DPI for me is 600dpi, but 1200dpi is not something so extreme nowdays (the difference on an A4 between 600dpi and 1200dpi is very small, ok, but noticeable).
With photozoom we can enlarge a 2000px+ image 2 times and obtain a nicer pic for printing, less blurry, ideal for 600dpi.
for example, for an A4 format (210mm x 297mm), 600dpi would require 4961x7016 pixels. The image will be around 100mb. For some people it may be something exagerated but it's the ideal resolution for a good quality. Photoshop calculates the ideal pixel resolution for printing when we create a new document. Just put your canvas size for print, and the desired dpi. volia, you may have an idea of your needs.
Older Canon and hp printers had a max 600dpi, and epson around 700+. I would contact the printing company asking for further info.
BTW, photozoom and similar apps don't do miracles.
What you're saying has nothing to do with the output. Printers don't print raw pixels. Read the new scientist article.
Higher resolution filesize is just wasting disc space if you don't have the PPI to support it. Read the new scientist article.
This list doesn't make a lot of sense, I think. The 'in-eye' density of the pixels/dots varies wildly if you graph it out:
I'd say that generally you wanna strive for a PPI density of at least So
1 feet = 200 PPI (phone in hand)
2 feet = 100 PPI (laptop/desktop)
4 feet = 50 PPI (no idea what Item goes here.)
8 feet = 25 PPI (TV distance)
Yes, the iPhone and such have a higher resolution than 200 PPI, but most phones don't, and things like the Kindle (162 PPI) and iPad Mini (163) are fine to look at despite being sub-200PPI. And PC monitors tend to be around 100; iMac 27"(109), Dell UltraSharp U2711 (109), generic 24 inch 1080p monitor (92).
What I was taught is to use at least 100 PPI for magazine prints, but is possible try to get 300 PPI.
edit: I figured I'd throw up a metric-based list/formula too: 50 cm = 160 PPI (phone in hand)
1 meter = 80 PPI
2 meter = 40 PPI
4 meter = 20 PPI (TV)
10 meter = 8 PPI
But to be honest, I think for most uses, the feet-based one is closer to what humans would use. No doubt due to our upper and lower arm both being a feet long. Finally, something the imperial system is kinda good at.
You don't read me well or you simply didn't read me
And as i already said, actual home printers offers a great printing resolution (you can buy a top model for 70). If you don't use the correct/ideal resolution you are not using very well your printer. Nor disk space, nor printing is an issue here, and more nowadays.
I found a more accurate article on a pdf with some common things i already said, read it: http://www.ideastraining.com/PDFs/UnderstandingResolution.pdf
anyways, i will always recommend 600dpi for photos. I don't care if i have a memory stick with 32gb of photos. Space is not a problem for me, and home printers can manage very big images very well.
The guide I found was just online from a print design forum, the distances listed are the average or ideal distances of the viewers. But because they are print designers, they like to print at a bit higher dpi incase someone gets closer.
Your list is definitely more accurate if there will be a fixed viewing distance.
@Blaizer, 600 DPI is fine for smaller photos, but at 36x48 it's not practical. Cameras do not have enough megapixels for that.
You've still yet to say anything relevant to the topic of the thread dude, nobody is talking about making small prints of photos. A4 is tiny compared to the size of print that the OP wants to do.
the OP wants to make a very large print of an image of a fixed pixel size. He can't take a new photo at higher dpi, and he can't print an image so small that he has 600dpi. Nor does he need 600dpi at the viewing distance of a 48x36 sized print (though obviously, if he had a gigapixel source image, why not).
So what is your point here?
I see the problem. Your math isn't right.
A fancy magazine, or an art book, prints at about a 200 line screen. Twice that is 400 dpi. So to reccomend 600 dpi to print to something that's not even close to that is just overdoing it. If you have a lower resolution image I'd just turn up the lines per inch on the printer.
I was just giving a comparison of what is the norm for an A4 format, so he would make an idea. Is that so difficult to understand?
I don't know how big is his picture, but for a poster of 36x48 inches, 90x120cm, at 600dpi, the image needed would be of 21260x28346px, nothing from another world, quite normal. And at 300dpi, 10630x14173px. This would not a big issue if the source image is around 3500px.
So, again... my point is that using an application such as photozoom, or anything similar, he could enlarge the picture to fit the needs. I think i said it very clear.
All the professional printing services here offers 600/1200dpi for any poster. You bring them a photo of 5616x3744 pixels for example, and they scale it for the digital print to fit the size of choice.
sprunghunt, is not a matter of maths... it's a matter of quality. And about viewing distance, meh, this is like the 4k/8k TVs. If you think 200dpi is more than enough.. yourself (but i'd say 150dpi if your machine is 8 years old and can't handle large images). And i repeat myself again, as i said, all this is quite subjetive. If i'm close to the poster, i would not like to see it blurry, nor dotted, and more paying 120$.
The best he can do is to talk to his printer.
edit: This would be enough good for a poster, but it's the resolution used for a page of a Japanese Artbook. Anime: Stardriver.
http://www.whiteblaizer.com/Files/Poster_sample.jpg
In illustration is very common to do all at 600dpi or 1200dpi (5000px-20000px+). So if you think a 20000px image is quite big... i'm gonna think i'm wasting my time. I printed my plant at 600dpi, and for that i rendered a 20000px+ image.
Blaizer. Printer DPI is not the same as pixels per inch.
This image should explain enough:
200PPI is enough for a print and even 100PPI could be okay for a small run thing like a company flyer or school magazine, but it's kinda pushing it. Ideally you want source images 300PPI or higher for prints, but at some point it doesn't matter anymore.
I really, really don't think there's any human that can discern 9600 DPI with their eyes. That's about a third or a quarter the size of a red blood cell, and fifty times as thin as a human hair. Seriously.
All the dots in a printer are needed for blending colors (256+256+256+256 CMYK dots)and multiple layers to make the colors pop. 9600 DPI means 9600x9600 dots in a square inch. Which gives 92160000 dots. Divided by 1024 (the 4 color channels) gives 90000 dots, square root of that is 300, so 300x300 pixels in a square pixels.
A 9600DPI printer can only print 300PPI in pixels.
Booyah.
You also don't get what i wanted to say, but the image you posted is perfect. As i already said, one pixel may be hundreds of dots. In that pic less...
With higher resolutions, a pixel can be very close to a bunch of dots. What is better?, a pixel represented by 8x8 dots, or 200x200dots? (it's just an example). But in the real practice, you can't have the parity pixel=dot, because a dot is not a pixel. I was talking about definition, not about how a home printer works
So, if we want sharpness, clarity, we need images with a high resolution. That's all.
The differente between 600dpi and 1200dpi is quite small but noticeable. At 600dpi i clearly see the dots in the photos, but 9600... that number is just to sell printers. At the end, as much, 2400dpi if i am not wrong.
I put the example of games with their fps. It's not the same to play at 60fps than 120fps. this is practically the same (there's a huge difference if we don't use the correct resolution), because like happens with screens, it's not the same to have an image of 595x842px on an A4 (72 pixels per inch), than 4961x7016px on the same size (I'm being exagerated).
the image i uploaded has the resolution needed for a 1200dpi A4 print.
from a printer of 2004 with a max of "1200dpi":
notice the ink.
With my actual printer i don't have those letters. It has a better dpi, and i have more dots per inch, so more definition. And what we want, is to have the smaller pixel as possible.
this may help a lot:
http://www.ehow.com/how_5082497_understand-dpi.html
A 300PPI print already has smaller pixels than a human hair.
You don't need a 9600PPI image. You need a 300PPI image printed on a 9600DPI printer so you have 1024 color variations.
As to what is better? Well, if you're going to print at too high a resolution, it could actually turn slightly for the worse because you're then exchanging pixels for color depth. If you push this too far it means you end up with 9600 dots that can either be on or off; only black and white dots with no grays. For text, this is fine. For images, not.
(mind you, this is just done with Photoshop's Levels, so there are a few stray pixels/colors)
On the left, we have 1*1px 'pixels' which means that every color is binary. Every Red/Green/Blue subpixel is either on or off. This gives us a total of... 8 colors. High resolution, few colors.
Middle has 2*2px 'pixels' which gives us more color variation. 125 colors. But you sacrifice some resolution.
Rightmost image has 4*4px 'pixels' which gives us a whopping 4913 colors, and yet again less pixels.
I'm 99.99% sure that the printers themselves have an auto-correcting algorithm inside to prevent this stuff from happening, and as such they automatically change a too-high-pixels-per-inch image into something usable. But I'm just saying that this is what would happen if you were to actually print something at 9600 DPI. You would get very accurate shapes of stupidly few colors.
Seriously, Blaizer, you have no idea what you're talking about.
edit: crap, I'm not sure if I'm did the color-depth calculations right.
((1x1 for dots) + 1 for no dots) -> 2 color choices (0, 100%) -> 2^3=8
((2x2 for dots) + 1 for no dots) -> 5 color choices (0, 25, 50, 75, 100%) -> 5^3=125
((4x4 for dots) + 1 for no dots) ->17 color choices (0, ........, 100%) -> 17^3=4913
yeah, this makes more sense. updated the original post with correct numbers.
edit the second: your images just loaded, and they support what I am saying. Look at the h from the hyperlink. It is far more wobbly than the other laserprinter letters, and the underlining is speckly - because the laser printer does not handle color variation well.
Your printer may have 9600x2400dpi, as mine, but at the end, you may only end printing at 600dpi because that's a huge amout of dots per inch. And of course, we don't want to waste to much ink. 600dpi is high quality and any image printed at that resolution takes only minutes. At 1200dpi the dots are ultra small and print times are higher, but quality... much better as i already said.
I'm not doing only game art, so i have an idea of what i'm talking about. Another thing is that you don't understand what i want to say.
For example, 300dpi are 90000 dots per square inch (that's the standard for printing documents with high quality).
- If you want a high quality print at 300dpi, for an A4 format (a photo), you need an image of 2480x3508px of resolution (any camera give us that resolution, and more now). Each printer dot represents one pixel, and that, does not mean you will lose color depth.
here's an example, zoom scan of a printed image at 600dpi:
- If we use an image of 1240x1754px (150ppi on A4), each pixel is represented by four dots. With less resolution you clearly will see the pixels printed on the paper
Imagine a canvas of 80x120cm... we need a good pixel resolution yes or yes.
Bear in mind that the image i posted have been printed at 1200dpi, in a format smaller than an A4. I uploaded a jpg with high compressi
Yes there is. Because the printer needs those dots to get color depth. It's even on the fricking manufacturers' sites.
http://www.samsung.com/uk/consumer/print-solutions/print-solutions/colour-printers/CLP-415NW/SEE
Which gives 600x600 pixels of 16x1 dots. 16 colors being, of course, 4 bit or 2x2x2x2 colors.
http://library.curtisconsulting.com/kyocera/documents/fsc5150dn/fsc5150dnbrochure.pdf , page 2. Multibit meaning the color depth.
Which gives 600x600 pixels of 16x1 dots.
http://www.office.xerox.com/printers/color-printers/phaser-6010/enus.html
Which gives 600x600 pixels of 2x4 dots.
You need 9600 ink dots (per inch) on the paper stuff to get enough color levels to make your image pixels not look like shit. You need more than 300DPI to make a 300PPI image look good. The less dots you have, the less colors you have.
edit:
I don't do just game art either. I spent 3 years in a general design school. And I've worked with actual offset printer (albeit years ago). And my best friend still works with printers (the company, not the device) on a daily basis. And I'm correct.
And I should stop posting at times later than 1AM because I make too many typos.
I'm just going to blow the image up with photo resize to 36x48 inches at 300 pixels per square inch. Maybe having that extra detail doesn't matter, maybe it does. I just want the best quality (even if you're close to it). Thanks for all the help!
much less dpi, ultra low quality, notice the dot pattern, compare it with the other image.
Snader, nobody prints at the maximum dpi of the printer... if printing at 1200dpi is slow, imagine how slow would be printing at "9600dpi" (that is not the real number in practice). As i said, 2400dpi is the maximum i have heard of in practical uses with some inkjets, and nobody uses more than 1200dpi for ultra high quality printing.
i'm understanding that you are not talking about the same as me because you came with things related to color accuracy. I have been talking all the time about, size of printing/pixels per inch. That laser printer from samsung offers a max resolution of 600dpi.
This professional printer has a max dpi of 2400x1200 (1200dpi). http://www.canon.es/For_Work/Products/Professional_Print/Large_Format/iPF8400/index.aspx
It has a buffer of 384mb and a HD of 250GB. We can easily print photos of more than 20000px!, posters at 1200dpi...
Using a printing resolution of 1200dpi and a 1200ppi image won't translate into less colors. If you still doubt it, do some A4 printing tests
Do you still think we need 9600dpi?. Man, 600 is more than enough for any home user, and we will have enough color depth.
The Xerox has 8 dots, which means 9 possible values for a color (0%, 11 %, 22% etc.) and 4 colors (cmyk) so it has 9^4 = 6561 colors per pixel (at 600PPI).
The Canon Prograf(btw, thanks for not giving an English link) has 12 inks over the same amount of dots. 9 values, 12 colors. 9^12 is 282429536481 theoretical colors. Unfortunately though, these 12 colors are actually not all different colors, with there being 4 kinds of black/gray for example. (well, unfortunately for simple mathematical color calculation. But quite fortunate for color clarity, being able to use standard CMYK image data, an expanded gamut, and apparently for the choice of matte/shiny black)
The point of professional printers is not to get more than 600 pixels per inch. Since the human eye stops at roughly 300PPI at a feet away. Let's get down to the real nitty gritty; the eye doesn't see pixels as an absolute thing. It sees them as relative size. It sees them as a part of the FOV our eyes see.
In the center we see much detail per degree of an arc, at the outsides (peripheral vision) things become blurry. We list the resolution of the eye as arc-minutes, which is 0/60th of a degree. The human eye has an arcminute of about 0.33, which means it can see 3x60=180 pixels in a degree, at most. Keep in mind, this is in the center of vision and comparing pure black vs pure white. Anyway, An equilateral triangle of 20 inches (a 20 inch object at 20 inches away) has an angle of 60 degrees on each corner. 60 degrees times 180 pixels = 10800pixels, which for 20 inches means 540PPI. That's the absolute upper limit the eye can discern, this pattern:
at 540PPI at 20 inches.
So for practical purposes, 600 PPI is plenty, even for a professional printer. But you still need the higher DPI to blend all the colors together, which is something else the eye is sensitive for. Of course, having colors instead of black and white makes the contrast lower and thus the arcminutes higher and thus the PPI needed lower, but it still needs the DPI to be higher.
Again, yet again, I'll say: You don't need a very high DPI image. But you need a high PPI printer. (and of course, it should be using decent ink)