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Pixel Peeking

printing resolution

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3 replies to this topic

#1
Russ Hons

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I have been taking photos for years, but more recently have been taking more photos that I would like to get printed, including those I took of a friends wedding earlier this year. 

 

So I have a newbie question about photos to print.

 

1st, I'm still a relative newbie at post processing, but been learning alot. What I find myself doing is zooming so far into the photos when "fixing" imprefections, etc. that I'm not sure what is going to look sharp in a print. I think I have alot of photos that would probably look sharp in print, but not sure. Is there a certain or standard percentage one zooms to check sharpness?

 

I did have this one printed on a 16x20 canvas and it came out nice, but it is harder to tell on a canvas print.

chriskeragift (2).jpg



#2
TBonz

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Back a few years ago I had some photos surprise me - ones that looked OK on the screen, but didn't think they would stand up well to an 8x10 or larger print but they came out beautifully at 8x10.  Of course, that doesn't mean they all will, but...

 

In terms of looking at the images when editing, if I'm unsure I'll take a closer look - usually at a 1:1 ratio in LightRoom.  If I want to see some specific detail I may occasionally move in to a 3:1 crop but that is rare and I know that it has already "passed" my 1:1 test. 

 

Lefty Release

 

The image above is an example where I decided to go to a 3:1, mostly because I wanted to see what the ball looked like.  You can definitely see the movement in the ball - I just wanted to see how bad the movement was.  I wasn't too concerned about the ball movement but wanted to see it up close.  In part, just because I wanted to see how close 1/2000 got to totally freezing the ball. 

 

Most recommendations I've read suggest that going any further than 1:1 isn't worth the effort and that even issues you see at 1:1 won't show up unless you are enlarging greater than 8x10.  I'd recommend taking one or two photos that you have concerns about and printing them at various sizes to see your own comfort level with the "issues" you see up close.  That will give you a good guage on how close you need to be for your own liking.



#3
IanB

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Photoshop defaults to 100% zoom when removing noise so that must be where they think it works for clarity.  If it looks ok there then i would hope they have done their homework sufficiently for me to trust them  :D



#4
Serge

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It's a very, very wide subject but in general as others have said: 100% should give you idea how it will look like printed. Of course it all depends on size of the image, resolution and viewing distance.







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