Saving Photos For Print?

[WideAperture]

I have an upcoming shoot for a restaurant and they plan on blowing the food pictures up really huge on banners for the outside of the restaurant. Typically when I shoot, I shoot raw and just save images the normal way from lightroom or photoshop (depending on what type of shoot it is). My question is, when you are shooting something that's going to be blown up huge (billboard, banners) is there a certain way you want to save the image after editing so that it won't lose sharpness/resolution when printed largely?

 

[tirediron]

Find out who is printing the images and discuss it with them. They may well have specific requirements for file-size, resolution, sharpening and format.

 

[Dave442]

Almost everything I have had printed on large banners has been just part of the overall image made in Illustrator or Coral Draw. So I have sent photos in JPEG, TIFF, and PSD. For a JPEG option I just use my Print Export which is a JPEG in sRGB full quality no resizing and sharpen for print; if size is not a problem then TIFF.

It can help to know how the banners are going to be oriented and generally they are not going to be in the 3x2 aspect ratio so there could be some cropping required. If I give photos for a specific layout that I want, then I provide the photos to the crop I want. If they are going to adjust the photo for their layout then I do not crop so they can crop just what is required (if I crop and then they crop again it can really hurt the final quality).

 

[dennybeall]

I find that if I work with the picture in PS and store in .tiff format with 300 dpi, the printers can do whatever they want with the file. I've never done really large banners though. I'd size it at just a couple of feet and let them size it . At just 5'X5' the file would be well over 300mb ..so I'd let them expand it to where they wanted it.

 

[Alexr25]

If you shoot RAW just import the images into lightroom in the normal manner and do all your edits in lightroom. When you come to printing, export from lightroom in whatever format the print maker requires. The RAW files are never altered by lightroom and all edits are applied during export so there can be no degradation of image quality through multiple saves.

 

[TCampbell]

The main challenge with JPEG format is that if you have to adjust the images, you can run into problems. If you KNOW that the image will not need further adjustment, then JPEG is fine.

However... just because it looks fine on YOUR monitor doesn't mean it won't need further adjustment. Hopefully you own a color-calibration tool for your monitor (such as an X-Rite ColorMunki or a DataColor Spyder) so that you can trust the accuracy of your monitor.

The printer might need to adjust the images for that particular printer and if they do, it's better to have a TIFF than a JPEG because TIFF (while having much larger file-size) is non-lossy.

Ideally things can be printed at 300 DPI. But that's a DPI that assumes images will be able to be inspected at close distance. Billboards, for example, can be printed at astonishingly low DPI values because they are expected to be viewed from hundreds of feet away.

 

[The_Traveler]

I have noticed that, with many of my photos, the further away I am, the better they could possibly be.
In fact, last night I called to my wife to look at a picture.
She was 25 feet from the monitor and just loved it. Her exact words were,'That's great. Now shut up.'

 

[Village Idiot]

I have an upcoming shoot for a restaurant and they plan on blowing the food pictures up really huge on banners for the outside of the restaurant. Typically when I shoot, I shoot raw and just save images the normal way from lightroom or photoshop (depending on what type of shoot it is). My question is, when you are shooting something that's going to be blown up huge (billboard, banners) is there a certain way you want to save the image after editing so that it won't lose sharpness/resolution when printed largely?

What camera are you using? This is where Mega Pickles matter more.