CGProPrints image preparation

[MattBurt]

I know some of you use CGProPrints for your images and I do too. I've had generally good results with their canvas prints but sometimes I get one I don't like and it's my fault. Sometimes they end up looking soft or over sharpened and it's not the printing process by my process that messes them up.
The problem for me is I'm just eyeballing the image and don't have a method worked out for prepping my images for their prints.

Do any of you fellow CGProPrints users have a good method for preparing your photos for this? Or how do you know when it's right and ready to print?

Thanks!

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Matt, I simply use Lightroom standard sharpening for matte, 100% jpeg quality. If I do not have enough pixels, I enter 150 ppi, as they say  between 100-150 ppi is sufficient for canvas. Never had issues with sharpness with them (nor anything else for that matter). I usually print 20x30, and I did it from 8 Mpx (Canon 20D), 10 Mpx (40D), 18Mpx (60D), 20 Mpx (6D) and can hardly see the difference. I printed 24x36 from 8 Mpx and 30x40 from 15 Mpx (Canon G10) and still do not see much difference. As an aside, none of my art show visitors ever raised any issue about sharpness. On the contrary, they admired the amount of details that matter.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

For instance, this is one of those 8 Mpx (Canon 20D) images printed on a 24"x36" canvas. Visitors are then delighted to see a mountain goat at the bottom. That is all the detail they care to see ("the detail that matters" - as I mentioned in the above post).

[MattBurt]

Thanks, I may have just rushed a couple of times and not looked closely enough at my output before uploading it.
I have a print of this one:
IMGP2938-Edit by Matt Burt, on Flickr

that I somehow over sharpened, probably due to user error (like applying a filter twice or something). The fireworks trails look pixelated but just in the file I exported for that that 24x36 print. I probably just need to be more careful and get that part of the workflow more standardized. I've been using Color Efex Pro a bit too which can definitely affect sharpness with the Detail Extractor filter which I like. It can just be easy to over do.