Upsizing P30 files for LARGE prints on Canvas

[Snook]

Hey guys Thought I'd ask in this forum before going to print.
I have some P30 files that I will be pringting to Canvas on a HP Z3000 printer. My pictures have extensive photoshopping and are pretty contrasty.
Was wondering what you think the best method would be to upsize them to be printed at   1.10 Meters (Max width of Z3000) by about 1.45 Meters long which is the format I get with my P30 and AFDII with out any crop.
Going to print er to Canvas (HP Ithink or Premium Brand) what is the best method for upsizing. I was told by another printer he uses photoshop in 10% increments. Where can I find a good idea how to do it at 10% exactly and correctly if that is truly the best way to do it?
Thank you very much in advance for any info.
Snook

[bill t.]

Hey guys Thought I'd ask in this forum before going to print.
I have some P30 files that I will be pringting to Canvas on a HP Z3000 printer. My pictures have extensive photoshopping and are pretty contrasty.
Was wondering what you think the best method would be to upsize them to be printed at   1.10 Meters (Max width of Z3000) by about 1.45 Meters long which is the format I get with my P30 and AFDII with out any crop.
Going to print er to Canvas (HP Ithink or Premium Brand) what is the best method for upsizing. I was told by another printer he uses photoshop in 10% increments. Where can I find a good idea how to do it at 10% exactly and correctly if that is truly the best way to do it?
Thank you very much in advance for any info.
Snook

Upsizing for canvas is a whole different thing than upsizing for smooth photo paper.  Canvas texture gobbles up quite a bit of detail, including digital noise, digital artifacts etc.  I quite often do not sharpen at all for large canvas prints.

In any case you can learn a lot by printing some 20cm x 1.1 meter test strips.  Pair up the same strips side by side, one sharpened, one not sharpened.  You might be surprised with which one looks better.

As far as I'm concerned, all the 10% thing does is make you feel like you're doing something.  But that's about it.  I think I get the best results from a single step resize in Smart Sharpen, which very careful attention to the highlight and shadow slides in the Advanced tab.  Also, for some images "Bicubic Sharper" gives a nice upsized result, even though it recommends itself for reductions.

But just print some test strips.  It's oh-so old school, and oh-so useful.

[Snook]

Thanks Bill.
I tried photoshop as I found some enlarger softwares caused like smearing/smudging slightly.
Will let you the forum know how it turned out.
Snook

[vjbelle]

Although there is a slight learning curve I would highly Qimage.  I have been printing and upsizing files for large format printing for a long time and to my eyes there is nothing finer than this program.  You really will SEE a difference between any other technique that you use and Qimage.  Forget about all of the upsampling techniques in PS..... Qimage does it all and much better.

Just my 2 cents.

[Ben Rubinstein]

I've just downloaded the latest Genuine Fractals, nice interface, not printed from it though and when doing stuff like this it's useless comparing on screen.

[crackennz]

I used genuine fractuals to upsize a photo taken on a 20d and then cropped, then upsized to 36x24 inches.

I was amazed at how good it came out and mine was a sloppy handheld shot, definitely recommend that program.

The pic is in critique section under prague-bench if you want to see a smaller size.....

[sergio]

I generally lower the dpi so dimension become a little bigger, like going down to 240 or 200, and I do the final resize in the RIP. I let the RIP do it. I have found this to work better than having the artifacts created by uprezzing in PS.

[Jack Flesher]

Canvas looks fine printed even as low as 90 PPI print resolution due to its exaggerated texture.  So to get your P30 short side of 4872 pixels to 1.1 meters or 43 inches, you simply need to use the native size file set to about 112 PPI and print it directly, no upsizing required.  

Cheers,

[Paul2660]

[quote name='Jack Flesher' date='Mar 20 2009, 07:45 AM' post='269308']
Canvas looks fine printed even as low as 90 PPI print resolution due to its exaggerated texture.  So to get your P30 short side of 4872 pixels to 1.1 meters or 43 inches, you simply need to use the native size file set to about 112 PPI and print it directly, no upsizing required.  

Exactly.  No uprez needed

Paul Caldwell