Printing pixel/inch for best quality
Hi,
When up scaling an image in Photoshop what is the best pixel/inch to go for 300, 360, 720 etc? I have carefully checked all upscaled images and they look good without any artefacts but I am not sure if more is better or if at some point the more pixel/inch will result in a more blurry print. My printer’s best quality mode is 720x1440dpi – any help on what I should do to get the best result would be appreciated.
Thanks.
When up scaling an image in Photoshop what is the best pixel/inch to go for 300, 360, 720 etc? I have carefully checked all upscaled images and they look good without any artefacts but I am not sure if more is better or if at some point the more pixel/inch will result in a more blurry print. My printer’s best quality mode is 720x1440dpi – any help on what I should do to get the best result would be appreciated.
Thanks.
Saving your images at 300ppi. (not dpi., they're different things), will be more than enough.
Just be sure that your saved image is at least the same dimensions as the print is intended to be and let the printer do the rest.
Just be sure that your saved image is at least the same dimensions as the print is intended to be and let the printer do the rest.
Decide what size print you want. In inches, and multiply that by 300 although you can get away with 220-240 if the print is large and to be viewed at a distance
Example: you want an approx A4 print of 12"x8". You multiply by 300 to get a minimum resolution of 3600 x 2400 pixels. Higher is fine. Your image should not be below this resolution.
Just set the printer to its highest quality setting - this will be something like High (rather than Normal) and print.
That's it.
Example: you want an approx A4 print of 12"x8". You multiply by 300 to get a minimum resolution of 3600 x 2400 pixels. Higher is fine. Your image should not be below this resolution.
Just set the printer to its highest quality setting - this will be something like High (rather than Normal) and print.
That's it.
The 'optimumi resolution to deliver to the printer is 600 for Canon printers or 1440 for Epson printers. 300 or 720 will be just fine too and whether you'll need or see the difference between the highest resolutions or the next ones down will be for you to decide after comparing the two.
I think you're referring to the printers' resolution rather than the resolution at which the images are saved on the monitor.
They aren't the same thing.
This is a subject that can very quickly become hugely overcomplicated when in reality the simplest solution, as CB and I have outlined above is all that's reqired.
They aren't the same thing.
This is a subject that can very quickly become hugely overcomplicated when in reality the simplest solution, as CB and I have outlined above is all that's reqired.
Here's a little primer on PPI and DPI.
http://www.rideau-info.com/photos/mythdpi.html
Well worth a read.
http://www.rideau-info.com/photos/mythdpi.html
Well worth a read.
If you do a lot of printing, you may want to take a look at Qimage. Not essential of course but it takes care of any upsampling and makes the printing experience so much better than printing from Photoshop. You just save one high resolution master file on your computer and send that to Qimage. Whether you want a 6" x 4" print or anything bigger or smaller, it's all automatically taken care of for you. There are of course 1001 other benefits compared to printing from Photoshop if you choose to look into it further.
Unless you really want to print your own work as part of the hobby then it's probably best to send your images to one of the many online print companies, you should still regard 300 ppi as a good figure for saving your image though.
Quote:it's probably best to send your images to one of the many online print companies
Sound advice.
I only print stuff at home for family and the occasional friend; for everything else I leave it to the professionals.
Some labs. will ask you for images saved at a specific size and/or resolution. Others, including the one that I use, doesn't. I can't say that it's ever caused a problem.
Again, as I said above, just be sure that your images are saved at a size, that's at least as large as the intended size of the prints.
They might also ask you to save the images in a specific colour profile. Again, not all labs. will do so. Once again, mine doesn't; in which case, I suggest you use sRGB.
Quote:Unless you really want to print your own work as part of the hobby then it's probably best to send your images to one of the many online print companies,
I came to the same conclusion years ago. There are so many things that can go wrong with home printing (never mind the PPI/DPI issues) it can be a false economy.
The OP looks to be using an Epson so 180, 360, and 720 ppi will avoid any complicated rounding by the printer driver, 180ppi will give a good quality print at normal viewing distances. Saying that the printer dialogue in Photoshop and in particular Lightroom do a very efficient job of any upscaling for you. (I much prefer to print from Lightroom for this reason).
Quote:
There are so many things that can go wrong with home printing (never mind the PPI/DPI issues) it can be a false economy.
Home printing is definitely more expensive - with the potential for distinctly higher image quality; especially if using Adobe RGB colour space.
Which option is a choice for individual photographers.
Quote:Decide what size print you want. In inches, and multiply that by 300 although you can get away with 220-240 if the print is large and to be viewed at a distance
Example: you want an approx A4 print of 12"x8". You multiply by 300 to get a minimum resolution of 3600 x 2400 pixels. Higher is fine. Your image should not be below this resolution.
Just set the printer to its highest quality setting - this will be something like High (rather than Normal) and print.
That's it.
If you're resizing an image for printing, you really don't need to start doing maths on the number of pixels - that's what we have computers for. Set the physical size you want, and the ppi (300) and the software does the rest for you. Life's too short for maths
Back in the day when I developed Fujifilm's first photo kiosk and we wrote the software for their digital minilabs, we had one customer who was told the higher the resolution, the better the image, so he scaled up a jpeg to make a 75Mb file size - for a single 6x4 print. Took 10 minutes to load into the kiosk and send to the RIP and the first thing that did was scale it back down to 1800x1200 pixels. 
