Photo Resolution

[TMW]

Hello Everybody -

I have a question... I have to send in a design to have a pop up banner for trade shows and what not. I don't have much to work with for photos. I'm doing a 33" x 80" banner. My photos are around 2500x1700 pixels (8.5"x5.5") at a resolution of 300 ppi. Am I able to enlarge these photos and still use them in my banner without them looking fuzzy and pixely someway? I have the CS2 suite and I'm doing this in Illustrator. Any thoughts would be great - thanks!

TMW

[patkennedy78]

Call your printer and ask them what resolution and print specs they need. But most of the time when you go this big you'll use a lower resolution image and the printed image will look pixelated up close, but not from 5 or 6 feet away.

[JaSok]

Here is one trick that I found in this book "Scott Kelby, The Photoshop CS book for digital photographers". It worked for me
You need Photoshop. Open Image Size, change in Resample Image to Bicubic Smoother, in Document Size switch units to Percent and type in 110, which increases your image by 10%. Press OK. For some reason it doesn't soften or blur the image. You have to repeat it several time (10-15) to achieve desired image size. Better to create your own Action.
Hope it will help.

[PrintDriver]

The 10% increment thing is a myth. At least after a certain threshold.

Your image isn't both 8"x5" and 2500x1700 pixels. It's one or the other. If it is pixels you're hosed.

Also, your image isn't at the proper ratio for the whole banner. Are you using multiple photos or taking a long skinny portion of the image you do have?
If you take the 8" up to 88" that leaves you at about 28dpi.

If you are using multiple photos, taking 5" up to 33" will leave you at about 50dpi. You may be able to interpolate up from there but it still won't be pretty up close and personal. And if these are lambda prints, they could be downright fugly.

Talk to your printer.

[Drazan]

heh, our client sent a 800x600 photo for a 8 foot tall backdrop... we had them reshoot with a pro photographer.

Listen to ^^PD and call the printer. Building big means building exactly to printer specs. Trying to fudge it will result in a really bad output.

[WannaBrie]

I agree with drazan, PD and Pat, CALL YOUR PRINTER! Can't emphasize this enough. Each printer knows the specs they need and will be happy to tell you becuz they don't want to have to fix files that are not up to spec. they will be happy to tell you what they need. Don't be afraid to ask!

[TMW]

Thanks everyone - the printers want a resolution of 300dpi when the photos are at full size. I tried the increasing thing by 10% and it seemed to help but then again, it hasn't been printed. Anyways, thanks for the replies.

[morea]

on screen it will probably look fine via the 10% thing because monitors only display at 72 dpi... print is another animal entirely.

At the print shop I used to work at, while 300 dpi was considered "ideal" we were sometimes able to get away with images at a lower resolution (I believe the quality was better on coated stock than uncoated). I have seen images printed around 250 dpi that didn't look too bad.

I'll join the list of people recommending you check with the particular printer you will be using, as everybody is a little bit different.

[MikeTheVike]

Its wierd to me that they want the banner art 300dpi...We print at 100dpi. And I have scaled some images pretty high, and they still come out looking ok.

[PrintDriver]

Your printer wants 300dpi for a bannerstand banner???
That's weird.
Really weird.
150-200dpi is more usual. These aren't art prints, right?
But if that's what they want.............

["Technical" Terry]

Hope you have a beefy computer. 33" x 80" @ 300dpi is 600MB for RGB and 900MB for CMYK. This is for a flattened file. If you do any layers you are going to have some massive files to deal with.

[Drazan]

Another tip:

If you have a sliced portion of the whole image scaled to size to print off a test piece, then you'll be able to know if what you are doing will fly on the large scale. Preferably, if you can have the end printer do a test proof. It's the only way to ensure the end results won't disappoint you or the client.

[TMW]

I'm sorry - why did I say that... they want 150dpi... Lord almighty - its early.

[PrintDriver]

Always proof in large format. There's nothing worse than a really big mistake.