I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong here...just did two test prints of leaves and grasses from a Leica M9 shot. Printed on my 7900 with the correct profile settings in the epson driver. am printing through Lightroom. For the size print I printed (letter sized paper) the dpi resolution was 500 dpi something (can't remember exactly)..anyway, printed one print at 360 dpi through LR and another print at 720 dpi through LR. Looking at both prints with my 7x loupe, the 360 dpi print is clearly sharper and has better micro contrast. The 720 dpi print detail in leaves and grasses looks lower contrast and is actually a bit mushy. Wondering what gives here? What could I be doing wrong..if anything?? thanks!, Eleanor
Eleanor
Your experience is completely contrary to my own test results and observations. In one case you are downsampling from ca 500 ppi to 360, in the other upsampling to 720. If the downsampled print to 360 looks sharper, then I am at a loss to suggest why. Except that -
Are you sure that what you are seeing really is sharpness and better detail, rather than edge artefacting which can make the print look a little crunchy and crisp but is not really detail at all? Often a correctly upsampled file with edge smoothing and very moderate output sharpening applied will look softer under a loupe, but actually is a more faithful representation of the original file. With my own work I aim for a “look” which approaches that of my darkroom prints – all the detail is there, but without any obvious digital edge artefacting (or haloes, of course).
Here is another Smith Labs idea. If the ppi reported in LR at your output size is 500 ish, adjust the cell size until you have an exact multiple of 60 ppi – in this case 480 or 540 ppi. Then upsample that to 720 ppi and compare.
John
