how to find a photos DPI for printing to insure good print quality.

jsecordphoto · Nov 13, 2015

dannylightning said:
will 200 ppi, be good for printing at a good print lab, i usually use adorama. some one was telling me they did some prints in 150 ppi on their own inkjet printer and they turned out great.

at 200 ppi according to the print labs quality bar. it shows red for bad quality, yellow for descent quality and green for good quality. a photo at 200 dpi i showing dead center on the quality bar which is right in the center of the yellow part of the bar.

at 200 ppi most of my photos will print out at 11x14 at 300 ppi most of them will print out at 8x12 i wold like to be able to offer both sizes if possible.

Just order some test prints man. If you hope to sell prints you really should be checking each image out with test prints before offering them for sale.

dannylightning · Nov 13, 2015

i would be pretty expensive to test print everything.

KmH · Nov 13, 2015

Which is why good image editing software allows 'soft-proofing' so we can see a good approximation of what a print will look like before we send it off to the print lab.
To soft proof you need the ICC profile combo of the machine that will be making the print and the paper the print will be printed on.
Understanding Soft Proofing - Luminous Landscape
Soft Proofing: Matching On-Screen Photos with Prints
Soft proofing from the Course Lightroom 5: 05 Printing
Printing & Soft Proofing « Julieanne Kost's Blog

PPI is the print resolution. PPI and the image pixel dimensions determine the size of a print.

As prints get larger they are viewed from further away. Viewing from further away reduces the need fort print resolution (PPI).

Now here is kicker #1- most chromogenic print machine's raster image processing (RIP) software basically maxes out at 250 PPI.
Most of the good online labs have a minimum print resolution limit of about 100 PPI that they stake their reputation for making quality prints on.

If the photo you want them to print falls below their print resolution limit, THEY WILL REFUSE TO MAKE THE PRINT.

Upload to them as many pixels as you can.
In other words - Do your composition in the camera viewfinder so you don't have to crop (discard pixels) post process to make a photo 'work' composition wise.
That way you always have the maximum amount of pixels for the lab to work with.

Which brings us to kicker #2 - aspect ratio. (see graphic below)
Nikon DSLRs make photographs that have a 3:2 aspect ratio - a rectangle whose long side is 1.5x longer than the short side.
Some print sizes are a different aspect ratio and the only way to make a 3:2 photo print at 5:4 is to crop (throw away some pixels) some of the 3:2 photo away.

And we will finish with kicker #3.
With most print labs, if you don't let the lab color correct your photos they do not guarantee their prints.

Some additional info on preparing a digital photo for printing:
Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom (2nd Edition)
The Digital Negative: Raw Image Processing in Lightroom, Camera Raw, and Photoshop (2nd Edition)
The Digital Print: Preparing Images in Lightroom and Photoshop for Printing

Peeb · Nov 14, 2015

In Photoshop (Elements 13), go to "Image", then "resize", then "Image size" to see the horizontal and vertical image dimensions.

dannylightning · Nov 14, 2015

KmH said:
Which is why good image editing software allows 'soft-proofing' so we can see a good approximation of what a print will look like before we send it off to the print lab.
To soft proof you need the ICC profile combo of the machine that will be making the print and the paper the print will be printed on.
Understanding Soft Proofing - Luminous Landscape
Soft Proofing: Matching On-Screen Photos with Prints
Soft proofing from the Course Lightroom 5: 05 Printing
Printing & Soft Proofing « Julieanne Kost's Blog

PPI is the print resolution. PPI and the image pixel dimensions determine the size of a print.

As prints get larger they are viewed from further away. Viewing from further away reduces the need fort print resolution (PPI).

Now here is kicker #1- most chromogenic print machine's raster image processing (RIP) software basically maxes out at 250 PPI.
Most of the good online labs have a minimum print resolution limit of about 100 PPI that they stake their reputation for making quality prints on.

If the photo you want them to print falls below their print resolution limit, THEY WILL REFUSE TO MAKE THE PRINT.

Upload to them as many pixels as you can.
In other words - Do your composition in the camera viewfinder so you don't have to crop (discard pixels) post process to make a photo 'work' composition wise.
That way you always have the maximum amount of pixels for the lab to work with.

Which brings us to kicker #2 - aspect ratio. (see graphic below)
Nikon DSLRs make photographs that have a 3:2 aspect ratio - a rectangle whose long side is 1.5x longer than the short side.
Some print sizes are a different aspect ratio and the only way to make a 3:2 photo print at 5:4 is to crop (throw away some pixels) some of the 3:2 photo away.

And we will finish with kicker #3.
With most print labs, if you don't let the lab color correct your photos they do not guarantee their prints.

Some additional info on preparing a digital photo for printing:
Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom (2nd Edition)
The Digital Negative: Raw Image Processing in Lightroom, Camera Raw, and Photoshop (2nd Edition)
The Digital Print: Preparing Images in Lightroom and Photoshop for Printing

1...bird photography, cant always fill the frame with the bird. cropping is needed most of the time. so with this photo here i could have cropped it bigger but the subject would be smaller and you would see all the mess of branches and bushes and stuff that was right above him but if the shop crops it it would just cut some off the sides but this one is right around 200ppi at 8x12 so i guess i am might order a couple of prints of these and see how they turn out.

2. i crop to a original format. works out perfect for 8x12 prints and every other size as long as the subject is not cropped too tight in the frame since other sizes cut a little off of each side. some images i can always re-crop since i keep the raw file. some images are not cropped and the bird is to tight in the frame to cut any off the ends so that plays a issue with some photos. i am thinking if someone wants another size i can re-ceop most photos to that size.

3. i usually do not have them color correct but i think i am going to start. i guess they make sure the photo is not too dark, they make sure its sharp and all of that.

4.. you did not call it 4 lol but ill check out those links...

i really only use lightroom because i want to have a final copy of my photo in a raw format. so i am not using photo shop unless i really really need to remove something from the image or something along those lines.

jsecordphoto · Nov 14, 2015

In my opinion hard proofing is the only way to go. I'm not saying ordering test prints at every size, you can order small test prints of crops to see how they will hold up printed at larger sizes. If you're going to sell prints to people, I would suggest seeing how they look yourself before accepting money for them. Trust me when I say that having customers that are unhappy with their purchase is something you don't want to deal with. 8x12 prints that aren't color corrected are like $2.