Digital BW, The Print

Hi Sarah:

The 1Ds is a great camera with an excellent sensor. I think that a  
lot will depend upon how sharp the images are to begin with, how much  
detail they contain that is important to retain (such as tiny type on  
a stamp), as well as the paper you choose. A photo of fluffy clouds  
can probably be enlarged to 3x4 feet and hold up OK without any  
special interpolation, to give a pretty extreme example.

In general, for inkjet printing, you should be able to get good  
results up to about 16x20 without interpolating. You might want to  
turn off resample in your image editor and plug in 180 or 160 in the  
resolution box. Then crop and print out a section of the print on  
your R1800. Then take a look from about a foot away as if it was a  
larger print.

I like the program BlowUp from Alien Skin Software for images that  
need to be enlarged to about 2-3x their original file size. However,  
like most software, it is not great for enlargement of fine details  
like small text.

I discuss interpolation a bit in this chapter of my book. You can  
download it here:

http://www.inkjettips.com/chapter2.pdf

Tips 28-31 cover interpolation.

Hope that helps,

Andrew
---------------------------------------------------
Andrew Darlow
Editor, The Imaging Buffet
http://www.imagingbuffet.com
Author, 301 Inkjet Tips and Techniques:
An Essential Printing Resource for Photographers - http:// 
www.inkjettips.com



On Mar 9, 2009, at 10:52 PM, Sarah Renkes wrote:

> Hi all,
>
> I'm appealing to all you master printers here on this forum,  
> specifically those of you who are lucky enough to own or have  
> access to a printer capable of printing larger than 13x19, which is  
> the largest output possible on my dastardly r1800.
>
> I have read conflicting things about how many megapixels are needed  
> to produce a "photo quality" print at a certain size, and I'm also  
> a bit confused as to how interpolation works in this arena.
>
> My Canon 1Ds (the flagship dinosaur) is an 11 megapixel camera that  
> gives me 62 mb files. Pretty small at this juncture in the  
> technology tornado. Everything i have read so far tells me 13x19 is  
> optimal size, but I have an image I'd like to print larger.
>
> How large can I print and still have decent detail?
>
> thanks!
> Sarah
>
>





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