Printing at lower dpi?

[Quantum]

Hi

I occasionally come across a client who want the impossible in terms of size from a digital file. For instance they may want a small crop or a very large print.

When I used to deal with labs for large banner prints I was impressed by the way they could eak out a big print which worked well when viewed from a distance. THey did this by having a lower dpi printer I beleive - around 120 dpi if I recall. So it looked "dotty" at close range but fine from a distance.

Is there any way I can replicate this on my Epson 4800?

I have a client now who's Mum has died and she wants to crop out an image of mine - but it is really pushing to even go to 7x5". I wnated to produce a print around 10x8" if I can.
How would I go about this - cropping and printing myself?

Thanks

John

John

[Tony Jay]

Hi John, what you are proposing is, in principle anyway, rather simple.

The easiest way is to use Lightroom.
In the print module arrange the dimensions of the image to the required size.
It is likely that the native resolution will be rather low given the information provided.
With an Epson Printer uprez the image to 360 ppi.
Print the image.

You may be surprised how good the image looks - even with close inspection.

Tony Jay

[Quantum]

Hi Tony

So you are suggesting exporting through Lightroom? Then printing through Epson? Or printing trhough Lightroom?

John

[sjgh]

Yes - it's rather straight-forward. You can also try a) Qimage to upsize b) Adobe Photoshop c)Genuine Fractals (think its called Perfect Resize nowadays) - used to be the gold standard. They use various algorithms to resample and resize fairly accurately at 300dpi if so desired and if wanted sizes that are enormous. Obviously there will no additional detail since it isn't there in the original.

John - if you want it photoshopped and resized - can mail it to me - have week off so should be able to have a go at it.

[Tony Jay]

Hi Tony

So you are suggesting exporting through Lightroom? Then printing through Epson? Or printing trhough Lightroom?

John

Printing through Lightroom is the easiest although there are other ways of achieving the same result.
If you need more help learning the process of printing with Lightroom in particular then the LuLa tutorial series "Camera to Print and Screen" is a brilliant resource to learn the workflow.

Tony Jay