Print on demand sites, print quality question.

[MGH]

Hi....I´ve been thinking of putting some of my work on a print on demand site namely http://www.fineartamerica.com/   They advertise museum quality prints, which could mean anything I know, all there prints are done with an Epson 9880.  I´ve been looking at some of the work on the site and I´ve seen 48"by31.8" prints for sale made from 4270by2836 pixel files, thats only 88.95 ppi.  Most of there big prints are done at 100 ppi.
  I have only printed at home up to A4 so have no experience printing big but to me 88.95 ppi seems way to low for a resonable viewing distance.  I have two questions one is what quality would you expect printing a 44" print from 4270 px on an Epson 9880 and two,  my file are 4752 px long side so what max print size would you recommend for so called "museum quality" prints.

  Thanks in advance

  mark

[PatrickAllen]

Hi Mark,

I have attached a PDF of a paper Ken Allen wrote with some rough guidelines for resolution to print quality. You can reference the chart at the bottom of the 2nd page. You can also download it here http://www.kenallenstudios.com/papersP.html

"museum quality" could be interpreted in a lot of different ways but it does imply the best possible print. I think the only way you can get the best possible print is by making a test strip of the image and assessing the quality. Inkjet printing quality is fairly consistent across manufacturers, I know there are also differences, but all are capable of making museum quality prints. The largest difference now is in the person operating the printer who is making the test prints, assessing the quality, making adjustments in Photoshop, and repeating this process however many times it takes to get a beautiful "museum quality" print. Is the printer a skilled printer who has a lot of experience and a good eye or is it an amateur doing monkey work and just hitting the buttons they were told. As the photographer paying for prints I think it is best to know who is actually making your prints and if possible work with them to make a "museum quality" print.

Best,
Patrick Allen
http://www.KenAllenStudios.com

[MGH]

Hi Patrick,

Thanks for the link,  this is what I was looking for although I´m quite suprized

  "Large prints may print beautifully when they are scaled up from 72 ppi to 300 ppi, depending on
the subject matter. When the subject matter is soft with broad tones and no fine details, it is more
likely to meet the best visual standards, even when printed with significant scaling. Conversely, an
image with fine details may not print with acceptable quality if the original resolution falls below
200 ppi for a given print size regardless of how you scale the image to 300 ppi"

  I don´t expect the very best quality just something acceptable. It seems you upload a file to this site and there software tells you what size you can offer it for sale based on pixel dimensions at 100 ppi.  The customer can choose between various papers and canvas so there´s no way to do media specific output sharpening for example.

Best
Mark