Printing from scanned negative

[FidelCastrovich]

Hello all,

I have a couple of pictures i'd like to enlarge and print. They were scanned from the negative and jpegged.
I'd like to print the post-photoshop version.
How do i do that? What do i need to look out for? Just give the lab a large enough jpeg, and they'll print it?

Thanks

 

[dinodan]

Hello all,

I have a couple of pictures i'd like to enlarge and print. They were scanned from the negative and jpegged.
I'd like to print the post-photoshop version.
How do i do that? What do i need to look out for? Just give the lab a large enough jpeg, and they'll print it?

Thanks

I just recently had a couple of 8x10s made for a contest that I'm entering. I saved the high-res jpeg files to a Compact Flash card (a good use for these since I no longer have a camera that takes them) and took it to the lab. They turned out very nicely. Though these particular photos happened to be digital originals and not scans, that shouldn't affect the result. I have printed many jpegs of 35mm negative scans on my little 4x6 Epson PictureMate, and they turn out just fine.

 

[PaulBennett]

Hello all,

I have a couple of pictures i'd like to enlarge and print. They were scanned from the negative and jpegged.
I'd like to print the post-photoshop version.
How do i do that? What do i need to look out for? Just give the lab a large enough jpeg, and they'll print it?

Thanks

Jpegs are ok for average quality prints up to 8x10 and many stores (a la Wal-Mart) offer a reputable 8x10 print for $3 using simple customer operated machines which allow cropping, red eye reduction etc. Just bring in a CD.

Jpg files are compressed meaning data is lost and only 256 levels of lightness is used. The lost data is often not meaningful such as in shadows or clouds. But when really interested in best quality, scans should be tiff (tagged image file) which are raw uncompressed data. Data depth can be 12 (1024 levels) or greater bits but unfortunately most professional printers using photographic paper are still only 8 bit. Also most of Photoshop filters only work on 8 bit files. So going greater than 8 bit may not buy anything meaningful.

I use a Nikon scanner for 35s and only use jpegs for a thumbnails 'catalog' to keep track of my slides. The pro print lab I use wants uncompressed raw tiff files will are around 25Mb (8 bit) or 50Mb (12 bit), or 10+ times the size of a jpg. I have had several professional prints 16" x 24" with extraordinary sharpness detail from 35mm slides scanned at 1350 ppi. I use the slowest finest film I can get. I also use a 16X multiple scan of the same image interpolating the individual spot, and virtually get digital values down to the film emulsion grain size. Although I don't think the resolution isn't technically doubled or quaded, but each scan pass adds additional smoothness to data cells pulling out detail I didn't think was actually on the film, which obviously helps on large prints.

When I decide upon an image to be printed from my jpeg hard drive catalog, I pull the slide and rescan to a 16X tiff file and do a thorough spot check in PS for dust. If film dust or scratches are an issue, labs can make an drum scan in an oil bath.

 

[JamesD]

Jpg files are compressed meaning data is lost and only 256 levels of lightness is used. The lost data is often not meaningful such as in shadows or clouds. But when really interested in best quality, scans should be tiff (tagged image file) which are raw uncompressed data.

This is not quite true. Jpeg images store many more than 256 colors (I believe 24 bit color, which is 16.7M colors). However, it is true that they use lossy compression. If you turn up the compression too far, you'll get blocky images (the "jaggies").

I agree that Jpeg is not the format to use for prints, Tiff is much better. Tiff is what I use when I need a digital print. Tiffs is a nice, long-standardized file format, which means anybody can handle it. Tiff files can be compressed losslessly, meaning image quality will not suffer from the compression, but I don't know whether the 1-hour labs (or any other labs, for that matter) will be able to handle compressed Tiffs. I always just burn them onto a CD uncompressed... big file, but no loss, and no worries about files the lab can't process.

I do try to find out what physical resolution the lab prints at, so I can make the file exactly the size it needs to be to print, pixel-for-dot. For instance, if the lab's printer works at 300 dpi, and I want and 8X10 image, I'll make the image 2400X3000 pixels.

All of this is irrelevant, however, since you've said the images are in Jpeg format. Just burn them to a CD and take them down to the lab. They'll be able to handle them just fine. In the future, try to save Tiffs (or other lossless format) for prints, and Jpegs for uses like posting here on the forums or on other websites. I don't find Jpegs useful for much else.