Printing large panoramas

DScience

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Hi there,


I have some interested people wanted to purchase my panoramas, but I don't know how large they can be printed before they start looking ugly.

These would be for some of my recent milky way panos. I've printed them on photo paper at around 10x20, and they look great! However the clients want a 16x48 and I don't know how it would look on that big of canvas.

Thus, besides purchasing a large print/canvas, do you have any other tips on estimating the max print size for a photo?
 
assuming 300dpi, do 300 times the final print size to figure out how big you can print.

300x48"=14,400 pixels on the long edge. Canvas you can get away with 150-200dpi because fine details don't show as well on canvas anyway. If you're stitching panos they should be plenty big enough to run a 16x48. You can also get away with some upres in PS if you need the file to be a little bigger.
 
assuming 300dpi, do 300 times the final print size to figure out how big you can print.

300x48"=14,400 pixels on the long edge. Canvas you can get away with 150-200dpi because fine details don't show as well on canvas anyway. If you're stitching panos they should be plenty big enough to run a 16x48. You can also get away with some upres in PS if you need the file to be a little bigger.

This is exactly what I was looking for! Thank you so much! :)
 
What type of print do you intend to have made?
A C-print, or a type of inkjet print?
If inkjet, how many colors will the inkjet printer use?
What type of ink?
What type of paper will the print be made on? (tooth and absorption)
How will the print be presented?

All those factor into how the print will look once produced and displayed. It's about a lot more than the image and print resolution (pixels per inch, PPI).
Fine Art Printing for Photographers: Exhibition Quality Prints with Inkjet Printers
 
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Photographic prints don't require 300ppi to look sharp and you generally stand back further from large prints anyway. Assuming the original image is nice and sharp you can probably manage this just fine with any decent camera from 16mp upwards, though I should stress the subject matter will influence whether or not something looks acceptable if the file resolution is not optimal. Photo labs have some clever technology for upscaling images though.
 
Lots of web print site cards (Shutterfly, Snapfish, etc.) are printed at 150 line screens, so 150 dpi. They look very good at arms length and even closer. A loupe will show the dots however.
I never go lower than 150 dpi on large prints unless it is for a special purpose such as a billboard or other display that will be seen at a distance.
 
You can print as large as you want. Sure, the fine detail of the print will start to lose quality but that only matters if you are viewing the printed image from up close.

Larger prints are meant to viewed from further back, and thus they don't need the fine detail resolution that smaller prints need.

Consider photos on bill boards. They aren't using 1000 mega pixels cameras, they are just regular photos. And from up close, they don't look very good. But you don't view a bill board up close, you view it from 50 or 100 feet away, and at that distance, it looks just fine.

Also, when printing on canvas, the texture of the material can help to hide a lack of fine resolution.

Here is the largest of the many canvas gallery wrapped prints that I have hanging on my wall. This one is 50" x 30" with a 2" frame, meaning that the print had to be 55" x 35". I took this photo with a Canon 20D, which is only 8MP. It does look a little pixelated if you get your nose up to the wall, but from only two feet away, it looks just fine.
Canvas-01.jpg
 
I used to have 20D at one time and remember it as a decent step forward on the 6mp 10D that was a nightmare for accurate focus. Nevertheless I had images used for billboards from both cameras and presumably they were OK.

The print Big Mike is showing has quite a lot of subject detail and that would be a challenge for a lower resolution camera, so a less complicated scene from the same camera might look good, even from a fairly close distance.
 

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