How large can I go? First time making big prints...

[clemmb]

I had one of mine from my XTi on a billboard. It looked great. I am not sure how big that was.


Mark

[SupraSonic]

Form Graphic Desinger people they always request RAW files.

[SupraSonic]

i.e. these file format is EXPANDABLE

[Gina Franco]

SupraSonic: I may look into this. Thank you!

[Gina Franco]

Mark: WOW! That's very cool.

[Dave Johnston]

I have printed 24x36 with my 50D and 20x30 with the XSi you have... both turned out looking great. Hope yours turns out.

[Daniel Browning]

Can anyone tell me how large I can blow up my images without losing sharpness and quality?

I've seen 2 MP images printed at 20x30 and they look great. (Of course, they would have looked much better if they were 200 MP instead of 2 MP.)


I've also seen 0.9 MP blown up to 50-feet (takes up the whole field of view and then some), and that looked great (movie theater).


So you can definitely make large prints. For your camera, 16x24 (with no cropping in post) would be 180 ppi, which most would consider pretty sharp, even up close. But it would take more than quadruple the megapixels (over 50 MP) to maximize the resolution of a 16x24 print. For more information, check out this thread:


What is the ideal number of megapixels?

[cian3307]

I've printed a few shots from my 10.2MP 400D up to A1 size (roughly 23 x 33 inches) and they have looked fine. Of course, this is assuming you're not squinting at them up close but standing back far enough to view the entire picture without having to roll your eyes around! Even close up, you need to look very closely to make out pixels. I suppose what different people consider acceptable is based on how close their eyes are to the picture. As Daniel says in his post, a movie theatre picture looks great, but thats because a viewer isn't going to be staring at a 1 foot square section of the screen from 18 inches away!

[Gina Franco]

cian: I *really* understood what DB meant when you pointed out that individual pixels will be visible at some point. Truth is, I haven't seen too many digital prints. Most of the prints I've made were film, not digital, so I'm starting to get it...


Thank you!

[Gina Franco]

As always, DB, your post is enlightening and extremely helpful (though much is still over my head). I always appreciate your input. Thank you!