Effective pixels need for magazine vs prints

[watha]

Referring to the Ultimate Digital System Essay, there is a paragraphy saying, "But, once we got beyond 6-8 Megapixels this changed. This as enough for full page magazine reproduction or an A3 sized print. Once we got to 11MP we were able to produce double page spreads and quality 13X19" prints".

Can anyone explain to me why magazine reproduction seems to need higher pixels of the CCD of digital camera than prints? What I am asking is, I can print as large as 13x19" from my 11MP files but why only as large as double page spreads in the magazine?

Thank you.

[Peter McLennan]

I wish I could help explain this, but all I know is what I see.  My Epson 4800 prints look far better than the magazine reproductions from the same file.   Usually I see more contrast and digital artifacting/noise from the magazine stuff.  Colour accuracy usually looks pretty good.

I imagine that it's a question of the magazine's printing technology.  The mag I'm referring to is a national publication, with good quality control.


Peter

[digitaldog]

First, fine the linescreen used for the repro work. Now use a quality factor:

Up to about 150 lines per inch, use 2X. So if you're printing at 133lpi, you'd want two pixels per halftone dot or 266 ppi in your file.

Over 150lpi, you can get a way with a 1.5 quality factor.

LPI is 185. You can multiple that by 1.5 or 277 ppi.

Now jus figure out how many pixels you've got from the capture, how large you want it and do the math.

[Lin Evans]

You must take this "opinion" (the one in your quote) with a grain of salt because it really doesn't hold water for the most part in the real world.

Talk to Melvin Sokolsky about it some time. If you're not familiar with Melvin just do a quick web search and you will find thousands of references. Melvin has done exceptional work for a half century or more and his favorite digital tool for several years was the EOS-1D. Yes, the 4 megapixel Canon dSLR. Melvin shoots for some of the most prestigious fashion magazines in the world (I'm talking big name magazines) and produces stellar work for them with the 1D. He told me in a web conversation last year that he couldn't see the difference between his 1DS and his 1D at single page line print (after 4 color cmyk separation, etc.) and that he could hardly see the differences in double truck prints.

The point is that the need for huge pixel count is highly over-rated at magazine print sizes. As long as there is "sufficient" capture resolution to allow the interpolation algorithms to do their job additional resolution has little value. Now we're not talking hyperfocal wide angle landscape prints here - we talking about typical magazine content which for the most part doesn't really need super high resolution to produce stellar prints.

Lin

[michael]

These things aren't gospel. They're rules of thumb, seat of the pants approximations, or whatever you want to call  them.

I was trying to make the point that for most people and most photographer's applications, 6-8MP is enough. Now the conversation has moved off in another direction.

One can take almost any position on the technical aspects of photography and find an "expert" who will either agree or disagree with that position, and have charts and graphs to prove it.

As for Melvin (who I know, and whose work I admire), ask him if he's shooting with a 1D now. Of course not. He got a 1Ds MKII the minute they came out. No working pro of his caliber chooses a lesser tool when a better one is available. We just don't know that it's "lesser" at the time though.

This also sometimes has less to do with performance and more to do with being au currant with ones peers and employers.

Michael

[Lin Evans]

These things aren't gospel. They're rules of thumb, seat of the pants approximations, or whatever you want to call  them.

I was trying to make the point that for most people and most photographer's applications, 6-8MP is enough. Now the conversation has moved off in another direction.

One can take almost any position on the technical aspects of photography and find an "expert" who will either agree or disagree with that position, and have charts and graphs to prove it.

As for Melvin (who I know, and whose work I admire), ask him if he's shooting with a 1D now. Of course not. He got a 1Ds MKII the minute they came out. No working pro of his caliber chooses a lesser tool when a better one is available. We just don't know that it's "lesser" at the time though.

This also sometimes has less to do with performance and more to do with being au currant with ones peers and employers.

Michael
[a href=\"index.php?act=findpost&pid=61651\"][{POST_SNAPBACK}][/a]

Absolutely - 6-8 megapixels is quite sufficient for the vast majority of magazine quality prints. Melvin, at the time, had both the 1D and 1DS but preferred the 1D in many cases. His point was that 4 megapixels was quite sufficient for the majority of his jobs and he liked the buffer, frame speed, etc. better than that on the 1DS which has a tendency to fill the buffer and with the older CF cards cause delays which were unacceptable.

Now that the 1DS Mark II is available it's his preferred tool but this doesn't mean that the print quality after CMYK convert and separation for four color print is substantially better at the relatively low 150 line print level. The print process is a great leveling device which effectively masks any real substantive difference as long as resolution is "sufficient" for the frame content.

We all love our new toys (I recently switch from my Canon and Sigma tools to the D2X for wildlife) and there is definitely the element of "keeping up" with our peers who are using the latest and greatest - LOL - but the bottom line is that the photographer is usually hard pressed to get the best from the equipment and a competent technician can do stellar magazine work with even the now "lowly" 1D.

A year or so we had some heated debates with the Dir of Photography of AZ Highways over some rather questionable statements made over digital versus film and as time marches on, AZ Highways has finally had to eat a little crow and back-peddle on their stance. My point is that as important as our tools are, few of us realize the full potential of what we currently use before moving on to the latest iteration.

Best regards,

Lin