Enlarging Images for Print

[gekkardboy]

I am a digital artist moving up from an Epson 7600 to the 9900. I was curious what method most are using to increase image size without loss of quality? I recall using Fractals when I was a designer years ago, but not sure what current methods might be. Thanks.

[natas]

I am a digital artist moving up from an Epson 7600 to the 9900. I was curious what method most are using to increase image size without loss of quality? I recall using Fractals when I was a designer years ago, but not sure what current methods might be. Thanks.

Fractals is what I use. It works really really well.

Last week I had someone pay me to print a 20x30 from there wedding 6 years ago on canvas. When he handed me the image I was stunned that the pro used a 3.1 megapixel prosumer camera (the ones that are like SLR's but with fixed lenses). Anyway I enlarged it to 20x30 at 240dpi and was stunned at how good of a job fractals did. Granted this was on canvas so you have plenty of room to fudge but it still looked good. Good enough for 3ft+ viewing.

[jschone]

-Photoshop Bicubic smoother
-Resolution 180 dpi
-Photokit sharpener

Jochem

[Ernst Dinkla]

I am a digital artist moving up from an Epson 7600 to the 9900. I was curious what method most are using to increase image size without loss of quality? I recall using Fractals when I was a designer years ago, but not sure what current methods might be. Thanks.

Qimage does it on the fly at printing time. No changes to your original files so the next time at another size or another printer it will do it in an optimal way again.

www.ddisoftware.com


met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla

Try: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Wide_Inkjet_Printers/

[KenBabcock]

I'm a digital artist too.

I basically paint everything large to begin with.  My thinking is that I can always downsize an image to a smaller print size if needed and obviously not lose any resolution.  Increasing resolution is next to impossible.  Fractals is okay, but there is really no way to enlarge an image without losing some detail.

Canvas is a little more forgiving and tends to blend the image a bit so you can get away with printing an image that has a bit of quality loss that you wouldn't normally try on paper.

In the future, start with much larger canvases in Photoshop and 300dpi.  If you need to decrease the print size you can, but you'll also be ready if you ever upgrade your printer size again.

[Nill Toulme]

You owe it to yourself (all of you, in fact, owe it to yourselves) to give Qimage a try.  Not only does it automatically and optimally up-res for printing at your designated output size, as mentioned above, but it also saves you the step of output sharpening, which it does for you automagically and in a highly effective way.  Highest recommendation, even without mentioning its superb author support and extremely reasonable price.

Nill

[walter.sk]

You owe it to yourself (all of you, in fact, owe it to yourselves) to give Qimage a try.  Not only does it automatically and optimally up-res for printing at your designated output size, as mentioned above, but it also saves you the step of output sharpening, which it does for you automagically and in a highly effective way.  Highest recommendation, even without mentioning its superb author support and extremely reasonable price.

Nill

I'll second the use of Qimage.  I have not printed from Photoshop for many years now.  Nill is absolutely right about Qimage's excellent output sharpening and enlarging on the fly.  The highest quality levels of Qimage interpolation give results that seem to me to be finer than Adobe's Bicubic Smoother or Bicubic.  Qimage also has a softproofing option that is at least as accurate as Photoshop's, and in some cases shows more accurately how the out of gamut colors will print.  But what I find really a nice touch is that Qimage remembers my printer driver settings as well as monitor and printer profiles, so that the next time I print I don't have to go through resetting the options.  In fact, when I change a profile, paper or other setting, Qimage asks if I want to use the last settings I had with that parameter.

[mburke]

I'll second the use of Qimage.  I have not printed from Photoshop for many years now.  Nill is absolutely right about Qimage's excellent output sharpening and enlarging on the fly.  The highest quality levels of Qimage interpolation give results that seem to me to be finer than Adobe's Bicubic Smoother or Bicubic.  Qimage also has a softproofing option that is at least as accurate as Photoshop's, and in some cases shows more accurately how the out of gamut colors will print.  But what I find really a nice touch is that Qimage remembers my printer driver settings as well as monitor and printer profiles, so that the next time I print I don't have to go through resetting the options.  In fact, when I change a profile, paper or other setting, Qimage asks if I want to use the last settings I had with that parameter.

I'll add my kudos to Qimage also. I never have to worry about up/down sizing or sharpening. I have taken some horrible files from a size standpoint (72 dpi and 3x5) and enlarged to 8x10 and gotten some fairly nice prints. They are not showroom stuff but not bad. The Qimage forum is fabulous for giving help in a friendly manner. This is the best photo software program I have purchased (lifetime free upgrades) and with the least amount of problems. Highly recommend...

Mike

[jschone]

Why would you let Qimage take care of the sharpening? Do it yourself through PhotoKit Sharpener and control the amounts is in my opinion a better choice. Also, interpolation can be done very well in PS. Bring it to 180 dpi (for xl images) and the printer driver takes care of the rest (uprez).

Ps. the examples on the (horrible) Qimage website are ridiculous. Sorry, but an over-estimated program.

If you've spent all that money on a 9900 I would consider a decent RIP. If you're not too much into the proofing business, Imageprint is still a very good choice. I use it on the Epson 9800, 7880 and 7900. It has an incredibly fast spooler, it's stable and easy to use. The new crop mark implementation works great. I think you should be able to get a demo.

[Nill Toulme]

The examples on the website are indeed ridiculous.  But give it a try before you judge it.

I also use PK Sharpener, BTW, but for capture sharpening.

Nill

p.s.  You've spent all that money on large format printers, and you let the printer driver take care of up-res'ing?  And you let it do it after you've done your output sharpening?  Different strokes...

[jschone]

Nill, uprezzing is always done by the printer, no matter what, with inkjet printers, to reach the dpi requested (720, 1440, 2880) That is the basis of the Inkjet system. Sent an 180 dpi or 360 dpi to your printer, and you tell me the difference.

Furthermore, I have used Qimage, but it is still using the native printer drivers. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Different strokes... pfffff

[Nill Toulme]

No doubt you are right.  For my part, though, when I can get equivalent results with less work, I go with less work.  And when I can get better results with equal work, I go with better results.  IMO and experience, Qimage gives me the best of both — better results with less work.  Different strokes...

Cheers,

Nill

[jschone]

?

No doubt you are right.  For my part, though, when I can get equivalent results with less work, I go with less work.  And when I can get better results with equal work, I go with better results.  IMO and experience, Qimage gives me the best of both — better results with less work.  Different strokes...

Cheers,

Nill

[PeterAit]

Nill, uprezzing is always done by the printer, no matter what, with inkjet printers, to reach the dpi requested (720, 1440, 2880) That is the basis of the Inkjet system. Sent an 180 dpi or 360 dpi to your printer, and you tell me the difference.

Furthermore, I have used Qimage, but it is still using the native printer drivers. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Different strokes... pfffff

Some people are just not happy unless others validate the way they do things. It's pointless to argue.

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Some people are just not happy unless others validate the way they do things. It's pointless to argue.

Hi Peter,

I'm not so sure. Only a few people are willing to fight the overwhelming evidence of a better way to accomplish a given task. Nothing wrong with fighting the obvious when one is right, it's just persevering in a sub-optimal solution against better judgement that doesn't make sense.

Qimage isn't perfect, but it does many things much better than the alternatives, and at a very modest cost.

Cheers,
Bart

[DarkPenguin]

You owe it to yourself (all of you, in fact, owe it to yourselves) to give Qimage a try.  Not only does it automatically and optimally up-res for printing at your designated output size, as mentioned above, but it also saves you the step of output sharpening, which it does for you automagically and in a highly effective way.  Highest recommendation, even without mentioning its superb author support and extremely reasonable price.

Nill

I've found lightroom does a better job.

[NikoJorj]

Nill, uprezzing is always done by the printer, no matter what, with inkjet printers [...]

Beware : some drivers use nearest neighbour interpolation, so does my R1800 at least.
So, I see better results sending at least 240dpi to the driver.

I use Lightroom to do so, and it's really transparent to the user : you choose your output sharpening strength, your icc profile, you nail the driver settings once and here you go : you just got to choose the template to get all this set, and hit the "print one" button, perfect results in 2 clicks.
Yes, I miss softproofing though...

But I did try QImage, and (interface set aside  ) I didn't felt it was so wonderful : in particular, the default sharpening tasted like rather oversharpened (but it may depend on your sharpening workflow, I use capture sharpening before output sharpening).


And, more closely related to the original question, for big enlargements I prefer a simpler approach (bicubic and some sharpening) to the more convoluted algorithms (genuine fractals et al.) that may meke some parts of the image look better, but give some nasty artifacts or simply bad results to others... Just like I prefer undersharpened to oversharpened.
Matter of taste.

[natas]

I used qimage in the past and thought it did a pretty good job.

I moved to a mac earlier this year and qimage doesn't run on the mac. VMWare in my opinion is just not a good solution. When doing large print jobs through a VM it is very very slow. I went ahead and bought Imagenest to do my layouts.

[Ernst Dinkla]

Beware : some drivers use nearest neighbour interpolation, so does my R1800 at least.
So, I see better results sending at least 240dpi to the driver.

I use Lightroom to do so, and it's really transparent to the user : you choose your output sharpening strength, your icc profile, you nail the driver settings once and here you go : you just got to choose the template to get all this set, and hit the "print one" button, perfect results in 2 clicks.
Yes, I miss softproofing though...

But I did try QImage, and (interface set aside  ) I didn't felt it was so wonderful : in particular, the default sharpening tasted like rather oversharpened (but it may depend on your sharpening workflow, I use capture sharpening before output sharpening).


And, more closely related to the original question, for big enlargements I prefer a simpler approach (bicubic and some sharpening) to the more convoluted algorithms (genuine fractals et al.) that may meke some parts of the image look better, but give some nasty artifacts or simply bad results to others... Just like I prefer undersharpened to oversharpened.
Matter of taste.

Qimage is transparent and flexible on the selectable extrapolation algorithms, including the slider for anti-aliasing on downsampling. It shows the native resolution numbers as a result of the printer quality settings and what part Qimage will do in the resampling and what is left to the driver if Qimage's maximum setting isn't used. The smart print sharpening setting goes from zero to 20 and the default of 5 is just a choice in that range, not meant to be a generic choice. The larger the print, the less original data and one should lower the print sharpening. No ambiguous choices here for sharpening like "gloss print" versus "matt print" as the print quality/resolution for a paper is already available in the media preset description of the driver, smart print sharpening should deal with that right away. With the good documentation provided in the manual + what Mike added in technical articles over time there are few large print jobs that can not be done with Qimage. Not to forget that feature to overcome a driver's print length limitation.

There's nothing wrong with its color management and the on-topic features mentioned above are just a small part of all the features available in that program. I have a Lightroom 3 beta installed and it is a nice application but no competition on my system to Qimage when printing has to be done. The Wasatch SoftRip 6.2 that I also have isn't used either but for some special jobs.


met vriendelijke groeten, Ernst Dinkla

Dinkla Gallery Canvas Wrap Actions for Photoshop
http://www.pigment-print.com/dinklacanvaswraps/index.html

[PeterAit]

Hi Peter,

I'm not so sure. Only a few people are willing to fight the overwhelming evidence of a better way to accomplish a given task. Nothing wrong with fighting the obvious when one is right, it's just persevering in a sub-optimal solution against better judgement that doesn't make sense.

Qimage isn't perfect, but it does many things much better than the alternatives, and at a very modest cost.

Cheers,
Bart

Qimage isn't perfect? Wow, will I ever second that notion. I use Qimage mostly for combining multiple photos on one page for printing. Yesterday I spent 2 hours, and ultimately failed, trying to put 8 images on a 16x20 sheet without cropping any of the images. Qimage seemed to have developed a severe case of schizophenia and, despite setting all the appropriate options, would not do what I wanted. It also decided that all my images had to be arranged in a grid, and lord have mercy I could NOT get rid of that grid until I removed all images from the queue and started over.

You might say that if I knew how to use the program I wouldn't have these problems - but why is it so painful to learn how to use the program? Once you figure something out the program always does a great job, but why is the figuring-out often so painful?

I suspect that Qimage was created by someone who is a programing genius and a usability moron.