Printing BIG (9ftx4ft)

[RobbieV]

Last year I won a competition in a near-by town.
This year, I gave the town's museum and archives permission to use my photo in a permanent display on a wall inside their newly renovated building.

The photo will be above the entrance way, about 10 feet off the ground. I estimate the viewing distance to be anywhere from 8 feet and beyond. It will be lit, but I'm not sure of the amount or type (spot or diffused)

The print size will be 9ft by 4ft. They are printing it themselves, and I want to provide them with the highest quality file possible. It will be printed digitally.

I have found some resources online, but I feel more confident in asking the advice of forum members on here, as I have yet to be led down a wrong path here.

The picture is a 5 picture stitch made with a 16MP camera and about 30% overlap. It's about 12,000px wide.

So then, my questions are the following:

File set up: is it better to let the printer scale the picture, should I set up the photo in actual size?

Processing: Should I add additional sharpening since it will be very big and further away, or should I keep my reasonable amount of sharpening I typically apply to my photos.

Resolution: I want the highest quality. Should I leave resolution at 300? Should I match it to the printer's highest resolution? Should I lower it based on the viewing distance?

Are there any other tips or suggestions you can give me in order to ensure I provide the printer with the highest quality file?

Thanks for your help.

[David Eckels]

Schewe, The Digital Print.

[RobbieV]

It's on order, but thanks. I bought his first book when it came out referred to it when initially processing the image as well.

I'm also looking for some real-world input if anyone has done this. The luminous-landscape article on printing big sheds a bit of light, but I always like to hear feedback from people who may have done this.

[fetish]

my advice is that you should get to know the printmaker making the print and be a part of the printing process.
and I think if he's a reasonably decent printmaker, he'd wanna talk to you about the picture too, cuz he's supposed to tell you exactly what he needs from you.

but in a nutshell:

File set up: is it better to let the printer scale the picture, should I set up the photo in actual size?

give the printmaker your image in its native resolution (eg, if it's 3000x2000 out of the camera, give him the file in that resolution, unless it's cropped)

Processing: Should I add additional sharpening since it will be very big and further away, or should I keep my reasonable amount of sharpening I typically apply to my photos.

by right, the printmaker should know which sharpening method to employ for different situations so leave it to him.

Resolution: I want the highest quality. Should I leave resolution at 300? Should I match it to the printer's highest resolution? Should I lower it based on the viewing distance?

leave the resolution at the image's native resolution. the printmaker might have better interpolation software to help with the enlargement, and he should know the optimal dpi/ppi to apply to the final print image.

Are there any other tips or suggestions you can give me in order to ensure I provide the printer with the highest quality file?

no. like i said just now, if he's a decent printmaker, he's the one who should be telling you what he needs from you.

if you've met him and feels he doesn't know what he's doing, have the museum employ a different printer.

[hugowolf]

It's on order, but thanks. I bought his first book when it came out referred to it when initially processing the image as well.

I'm also looking for some real-world input if anyone has done this. The luminous-landscape article on printing big sheds a bit of light, but I always like to hear feedback from people who may have done this.

You are asking questions which are difficult to answer without knowing where they are to be printed, by whom, on what machine, process, and media.

If you find out who is doing it, they may well be able to answer a lot of your questions.

Brian A

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Last year I won a competition in a near-by town.
This year, I gave the town's museum and archives permission to use my photo in a permanent display on a wall inside their newly renovated building.

The photo will be above the entrance way, about 10 feet off the ground. I estimate the viewing distance to be anywhere from 8 feet and beyond. It will be lit, but I'm not sure of the amount or type (spot or diffused)

The print size will be 9ft by 4ft. They are printing it themselves, and I want to provide them with the highest quality file possible. It will be printed digitally.

I have found some resources online, but I feel more confident in asking the advice of forum members on here, as I have yet to be led down a wrong path here.

The picture is a 5 picture stitch made with a 16MP camera and about 30% overlap. It's about 12,000px wide.

Hi Rob,

The effective minimum viewing distance will be sqrt(8^2 + 10^2) = 12.8 feet then. That would require an output resolution of at least 22.38 PPI to satisfy the visual acuity of a person with 20/20 vision.

You have enough pixels (12000px) for the output width of 9 feet, which makes 111 PPI output resolution, and it will take 5333 pixels to get 4 feet in height. So your image resolution is more than adequate for the required output size and viewing distance.

So then, my questions are the following:

File set up: is it better to let the printer scale the picture, should I set up the photo in actual size?

In general, printer drivers use sub-optimal quality (bi-linear, or if you are lucky bicubic) for resampling. It is therefore is usually better to do the resampling up to the native printing resolution oneself, provided that a better resampling method is used.

Processing: Should I add additional sharpening since it will be very big and further away, or should I keep my reasonable amount of sharpening I typically apply to my photos.

Up-sampling to the native resolution of the printer (do you know what their printer requires?) also allows to postpone sharpening until after that resampling, and make use of a more artifact free up-sampled image quality to apply that sharpening to. If you do prior sharpening and then do up-sampling, then the sharpening will be 'diluted' and any artifacts will be magnified in size. I suggest to reconsider your workflow sharpening moment, and apply it last.

Resolution: I want the highest quality. Should I leave resolution at 300? Should I match it to the printer's highest resolution? Should I lower it based on the viewing distance?

If the native printing resolution is 300 PPI, then that should be your goal. The only concern may be that it requires an up-sample of your 12000 x 5333 pixels @ 111.11 PPI file dimensions to 32400 x 14000 pixels @ 300 PPI. That is close to the limits of some image editors and file formats. Make sure that that will not cause problems, for you, and for the printer people. Some printer drivers may run into memory issues when they have to digest such an amount of data. They should not have a problem, but you may want to verify in advance.

Depending on their resampling and output sharpening skills, you may want to let them do it for you, but I'd prefer to control it myself rather that rely on someone else.

Are there any other tips or suggestions you can give me in order to ensure I provide the printer with the highest quality file?

Only thing I can think of is to make sure you convert to their output profile, or at least proof if there will be gamut/saturation issues if your image has saturated colors before they do the conversion.

Depending on image content, you may want to adjust the output sharpening a bit and boost the spatial frequencies that are important for human visual contrast sensitivity, which peaks at 8 cycles/degree.

Cheers,
Bart

[RobbieV]

Thank you sincerely for all of the responses to this thread (the ones whom attempted to help that is).

After prepping the file, sizing it and burning it to disc for delivery, I was notified that the printer wants it in a .PDF. 

I ended up convincing the printer to at least take a .tiff file, but I feel like all of my work to prep the file will be all for waste. Just wanted to thank everyone here whom helped me anyways.