How to Crop and Maintain Quality for BIG Prints

[SarasotaSunshine]

Hello, I need help and hope this is the correct section for this question. I hope somebody can give me some guidance!

My problems are that I’m new to LR and to photography and, probably most important, I am “numerically challenged." By that I mean I struggle greatly trying to understand the relationships and effects that size, pixel count, dimensions, aspect ratio, and JPEG vs TIF have on the quality of a large, PRINTED photo.

I am mostly interested in being able to have my photos printed on canvas in large sizes all the way up to 30×20 or even much larger, when possible.

Most of my more recent photos are taken with my “beginner” DSLR (a Nikon D3200) which has 24 megapixels. I’m shooting in RAW format. Some of my older photos were taken with an old 4.1MP digital camera, and some with my Samsung GS3 smart phone, at 8MP. I often need to crop or straighten my images (being new to photography) and find that I lose QUALITY at the larger sizes, ending up with images that begin to look pixelated or grainy when printed at the large sizes I want. Of course, this is more pronounced with the photos from my poorer cameras and less problematic (but sometimes still a problem) with the D3200.

Can you point me to a VERY SIMPLE tutorial that will help me understand these terms, how they affect my photos, and how best to use LR, GIMP, or other tools to achieve images that will stand up to these larger print sizes? Remember, I really am numerically challenged! :blush:

Thanks!

 

[Tony Jay]

Sue, my suggestion is to go to the Luminous landscape website and purchase the "Camera to Print and Screen" tutorial.
This covers the full workflow from shooting all the way to making large prints, including canvas.

My strong suggestion is to cover this tutorial from beginning to end because you need a good primer on the topic.
At any time you can stop and research issues as needed.
It will take some time - the combined length of all the various tutorials is many hours.

The best thing about this tutorial is that it covers the entire workflow for your purposes.

Tony Jay

 

[SarasotaSunshine]

That looks like it would be good, but it's a bit pricey for me at this time. It also looks like it covers quite a bit on printers and their use, and I have my images printed by an art print shop here in town and don't expect to be investing in large-format printers anytime soon.

I was kinda hoping for some free tutorials, since I've been so fortunate to find so many free tutorials on LR, GIMP, Photography, etc. I've searched, but many of the tutorials I've found on this subject assumed too much pre-knowledge that I just don't have.

Maybe what I'm looking for doesn't exist in my price-range ($0)? :hm:

Thanks,

 

[Bryan Conner]

I second Tony's suggestion.

 

[Bryan Conner]

That looks like it would be good, but it's a bit pricey for me at this time. It also looks like it covers quite a bit on printers and their use, and I have my images printed by an art print shop here in town and don't expect to be investing in large-format printers anytime soon.

I was kinda hoping for some free tutorials, since I've been so fortunate to find so many free tutorials on LR, GIMP, Photography, etc. I've searched, but many of the tutorials I've found on this subject assumed too much pre-knowledge that I just don't have.

Maybe what I'm looking for doesn't exist in my price-range ($0)? :hm:

Thanks,

Have you tried the videos that are available under the Help tab in a Lightroom? The Luminous Landscape videos are still worth the investment into your photography life.

 

[Tony Jay]

That looks like it would be good, but it's a bit pricey for me at this time. It also looks like it covers quite a bit on printers and their use, and I have my images printed by an art print shop here in town and don't expect to be investing in large-format printers anytime soon.

I was kinda hoping for some free tutorials, since I've been so fortunate to find so many free tutorials on LR, GIMP, Photography, etc. I've searched, but many of the tutorials I've found on this subject assumed too much pre-knowledge that I just don't have.

Maybe what I'm looking for doesn't exist in my price-range ($0)? :hm:

Thanks,

Sue, if you are assuming that just delivering a file to the printshop will give you the blockbuster that you desire this is not going to happen.
Unless you understand the entire workflow regarding image quality (IQ) and colour management and other imperatives like capture sharpening, creative sharpening, and output sharpening then you will not get the results you are after.
Whether you are printing in your own home or outsourcing changes nothing: you absolutely need to understand the whole process.

Your suggestion that $60 is excessive is a completely false economy in the context of the costs associated with large prints canvas or no.
Many people completely mess up their printing for a long time and have no idea of how good the results can be, just that they are disappointed.

I taught myself every aspect of colour management and other issues around printing BEFORE I ever had a printer. It took a year.
I downloaded the printer driver for the printer I was interested in (Epson Stylus Pro 7900) and many, many ICC profiles for different papers and then practised softproofing with the different papers (hot and cold, matte and gloss). I practised setting up the printer for various paper sizes and quality settings etc. I knew the ins-and-outs of that printer driver long before I was ever actually able to play with the printer.
When I did finally purchase the printer the very first print was a perfect (as close as is possible when comparing a print with the screen view of an image) reproduction and contained detail that I could not appreciate on-screen.

I don't know whether the printshop you are contemplating using is fully colour-managed or not.
If they are not then find one that is otherwise any printing will be an absolute lottery.

I apologise if what I am saying sounds a bit like a sermon.
The bottom line is that without the correct knowledge and insight printing will be both an expensive and frustrating exercise for you and I want to spare you that.
Printing, for me anyway, is the pinnacle of photographic art and in order to really appreciate and enjoy the creative aspects of this art there is an inevitable technical learning curve.
When Andre Rieu is performing he is both conducting and playing the violin simultaneously and he is concentrating on creating beautiful music not how to play individual notes.
You can also aspire to the same level of creativity with your photography and printing.
The fact that you are not physically using the printer matters not.
Like Andre Rieu conducting the wind and percussion sections of his orchestra he knows exactly what he is going to hear even though it is possible that he would not even know how to start playing a clarinet or trombone.
In the same way you ought to be in the position where, once that file is sent to the printer you know exactly how it will turn out.
If at this stage you cannot see how exactly to get there this is why you need the sort of information that I have suggested to set your course.

Tony Jay

 

[Replytoken]

Hello, I need help and hope this is the correct section for this question. I hope somebody can give me some guidance!

My problems are that I’m new to LR and to photography and, probably most important, I am “numerically challenged." By that I mean I struggle greatly trying to understand the relationships and effects that size, pixel count, dimensions, aspect ratio, and JPEG vs TIF have on the quality of a large, PRINTED photo.

I am mostly interested in being able to have my photos printed on canvas in large sizes all the way up to 30×20 or even much larger, when possible.

Most of my more recent photos are taken with my “beginner” DSLR (a Nikon D3200) which has 24 megapixels. I’m shooting in RAW format. Some of my older photos were taken with an old 4.1MP digital camera, and some with my Samsung GS3 smart phone, at 8MP. I often need to crop or straighten my images (being new to photography) and find that I lose QUALITY at the larger sizes, ending up with images that begin to look pixelated or grainy when printed at the large sizes I want. Of course, this is more pronounced with the photos from my poorer cameras and less problematic (but sometimes still a problem) with the D3200.

Can you point me to a VERY SIMPLE tutorial that will help me understand these terms, how they affect my photos, and how best to use LR, GIMP, or other tools to achieve images that will stand up to these larger print sizes? Remember, I really am numerically challenged! :blush:

Thanks!

Might I suggest a trip to your local library if possible? And, if you have the time, I suggest searching the web and reading as much as possible. There are many good articles available. Both photo.net and dpreview.com have articles that will give you a good start. And Norman Koren has a number of tutorials that are also helpful once you have the basics in hand.

Printing in a lab may reduce some of your learning curve, but know that wanting to print 20x30 images right out of the gate, and having them look the way that you wish, may be a bit of a challenge. As Tony touched upon, there are a lot of factors that go into making a good print. I suspect that a bit of trial and error printing may be helpful, and for that Costco is your friend as they are reasonably affordable for larger prints.

Good luck,

--Ken

 

[clee01l]

...I struggle greatly trying to understand the relationships and effects that size, pixel count, dimensions, aspect ratio, and JPEG vs TIF have on the quality of a large, PRINTED photo.

I am mostly interested in being able to have my photos printed on canvas in large sizes all the way up to 30×20 or even much larger, when possible....

Not to diminish the recommendations for outside reading because they are useful. I would instead try to teach you a simple formula for printing images. It all has to do with pixels that you have versus pixels that the printer can manage effectively. Most printers have a native resolution of 300 or 360pixels per inch (PPI). Reasonable quality can be maintained with a pixel density of 180ppi or in some instances as low as 110ppi. So to use your example of 30"X20", how many pixels do you need in your image to prin at the optimum of 300ppi? 30X300=9000 20X300=6000 So fo an optimum you need an image that measures at least 9000X6000 pixels to get a print 30"X20". That is a lot of pixels and certainly exceeds the resolution of your D3200 which is 6,016 x 4,000 (or 6000X4000) Doing the same math for reasonable quality (180ppi) you will need to start with 5400X 3600 pixels in your full image or a crop of that full image, And this does fit nicely into the sensor dimensions that you have.

So, if you want guidelines: take the desired print dimensions in inches and convert that to pixels at first 300 ppi and then at 180ppi. This will give the range of pixel dimensions that can be expected to produce a decent print at the size you desire. If you have a crop for composition and you need to know how large you can print it just do the math for 300ppi and 180ppi If your crop is 1024X768, at 300 ppi you get a printed image 3.41"X2.56" And at 180ppi a print will be 5.68"X4.26"

Notice that my last example is a a different aspect ratio than the native 3:2 aspect ratio of your camera sensor. The 1024X768 crop has an aspect ratio of 4:3. This not so coincidently is the aspect ratio and pixel dimensions of the old XGA standard for CRT monitors. The only way you can fill a monitor of this size is by cropping off the edges of the full image (3:2) so that the result will fit into an aspect ratio of 4:3. But you want paper prints. Note that paper is sold in standard sizes with aspect ratios commonly 4:5 (8"X10") and 5:7 (5"X7") your printing and framing will be cheapest if you print and mount to a standard size. But this will mean that you will need to crop a window of that aspect ration out of the 3:2 sensor aspect ratio.

There are two principles to master here. One is understanding the relationship of the printer resolution in pixels and its relationship to the pixels that you have to work with. The other is to understand aspect ratio which is always the long dimension compared to the short dimension and reduced to the lowest common denominator.

I can expand these two principles more if you like.

 

[SarasotaSunshine]

There are two principles to master here. One is understanding the relationship of the printer resolution in pixels and its relationship to the pixels that you have to work with. The other is to understand aspect ratio which is always the long dimension compared to the short dimension and reduced to the lowest common denominator.

I can expand these two principles more if you like.

Cletus, thank you SO MUCH!!! This is exactly the type of information I was hoping to get! If you have the time, I'd love to take you up on your offer to expand on what you already provided. :nod:

One of the questions I have is how to best get an on-screen "preview" of the resolution/quality I might expect from a print. I do understand that what I see on-screen is not what the printed version will be, but I'd like to know if there's at least a way to get an on-screen look at whether I can expect a print of a certain size to look good. Is that possible? Would I have to change the image size of the image to the size I want to print and then view it at 100%, or is there a more efficient way to do it without actually changing the image size?

Another question I have is regarding output from LR. I import an image into LR, manipulate it (including cropping sometimes), and then want to send the finished product to my print shop. I know how to export it out of LR, but don't understand what selections I should be making from LR 5's export dialog to best preserve resolution & quality for the larger prints I typically want. I've currently been sending JPEG format to my print shop, and he has not complained. I'll ask him if he'd prefer TIFF or some other format. Is TIFF better? And what are the selections I should be making in the rest of the fields in that dialog?

I hope you (and the rest of the gang, here) understand that while I'm asking these questions, I'm not just sitting back and hoping for an answer to solve all my questions. I AM definitely searching for and reading (or viewing) tutorials and other sources to learn as much as I can within reason. See my next reply for more on the "within reason" part.

Again, thanks!

 

[JimHess43]

I remember reading some time ago that looking at an image at 50% Magnification or zoom will give a good approximation of how the image will look when printed. The problem is that your monitor is displaying in less than 100 PPI, so it's difficult to really know for sure. But I have used that 50% rule and it has worked for me. I don't have any empirical data or anything else to back up what I remember reading. But that has been the formula I have used and it seems to work.

Whether or not your lab will accept anything but a JPEG image is something you will have to determine by talking to the lab people. My experience is that most labs expect JPEG images. So if you do all of your editing on your raw file, or at least as much of it as possible, and then export the JPEG for the lab you should expect good results.

The math that was explained to you in a previous reply is a good guideline as far as quality goes. Changing the PPI setting in the image file itself isn't really going to make any difference in the quality of the image. You have to have enough pixels in the image to print at what ever size and resolution you are expecting. So it6 will probably take some experimenting on your part to determine what is acceptable. Most people seem to suggest that as far as quality is concerned, 85% or higher is usually adequate in most situations.

A lot of your print quality will depend on the quality of your images. And that depends on the care you devote as you take your images. Proper exposure and good stability really help. If there's even a little camera shake, or you have to modify exposure extensively, it can really affect the quality of your printing.

Everyone wants all the answers so that they can get perfect prints every time. I'm afraid there really isn't a magical formula. Go ahead and have a couple of prints done and evaluate the results. It's a good learning tool to do that.

 

[SarasotaSunshine]

Sue, if you are assuming that just delivering a file to the printshop will give you the blockbuster that you desire this is not going to happen.
Unless you understand the entire workflow regarding image quality (IQ) and colour management and other imperatives like capture sharpening, creative sharpening, and output sharpening then you will not get the results you are after.
Whether you are printing in your own home or outsourcing changes nothing: you absolutely need to understand the whole process.

Your suggestion that $60 is excessive is a completely false economy in the context of the costs associated with large prints canvas or no.
Many people completely mess up their printing for a long time and have no idea of how good the results can be, just that they are disappointed.

I taught myself every aspect of colour management and other issues around printing BEFORE I ever had a printer. It took a year.
I downloaded the printer driver for the printer I was interested in (Epson Stylus Pro 7900) and many, many ICC profiles for different papers and then practised softproofing with the different papers (hot and cold, matte and gloss). I practised setting up the printer for various paper sizes and quality settings etc. I knew the ins-and-outs of that printer driver long before I was ever actually able to play with the printer.
When I did finally purchase the printer the very first print was a perfect (as close as is possible when comparing a print with the screen view of an image) reproduction and contained detail that I could not appreciate on-screen.

I don't know whether the printshop you are contemplating using is fully colour-managed or not.
If they are not then find one that is otherwise any printing will be an absolute lottery.

I apologise if what I am saying sounds a bit like a sermon.
The bottom line is that without the correct knowledge and insight printing will be both an expensive and frustrating exercise for you and I want to spare you that.
Printing, for me anyway, is the pinnacle of photographic art and in order to really appreciate and enjoy the creative aspects of this art there is an inevitable technical learning curve.
When Andre Rieu is performing he is both conducting and playing the violin simultaneously and he is concentrating on creating beautiful music not how to play individual notes.
You can also aspire to the same level of creativity with your photography and printing.
The fact that you are not physically using the printer matters not.
Like Andre Rieu conducting the wind and percussion sections of his orchestra he knows exactly what he is going to hear even though it is possible that he would not even know how to start playing a clarinet or trombone.
In the same way you ought to be in the position where, once that file is sent to the printer you know exactly how it will turn out.
If at this stage you cannot see how exactly to get there this is why you need the sort of information that I have suggested to set your course.

Tony Jay

Tony, I truly appreciate your advice and, as I said in my previous post, I'm studying these topics as we speak. I have an opinion I'd like to share on just how much I should delve into the technical aspects. I am giving this opinion with a huge amount of respect for your opinion (and others here) and for your knowledge, so I hope my differing viewpoint will not offend you in any way, as absolutely no offense is intended. So, here are my thoughts...

Learning all the technical details of how things work is not always the best use of one's time. I have a print shop whose job it is to understand how to achieve the best results from the equipment they use and the files they receive from their clients. I do understand that if I knew everything my print shop knows, I might achieve a somewhat better result. What I need to decide is whether the investment I would have to make in learning everything my print shop knows is worth the potential percentage of improvement to the quality of my prints. I don't believe the percentage of quality improvement I would gain from all that knowledge is sufficient to be worth the investment. Perhaps if I was a professional photographer selling my work to galleries at high prices, I would feel a need to take a greater degree of responsibility for the quality of my prints, but that's not where I am now and really unlikely where I'll ever be.

However, I DO feel that there is value in increasing my knowledge in this area and I am working on that by researching, reading, and asking questions here. With a higher degree of understanding of these things, I can probably increase the quality of the files I send to the print shop to a sufficient degree to make a big difference in the results.

Just to drive home my point a bit more (if I'm not beating a dead horse), let's use an example outside the world of photography. I own a car, and it is really quite important to me. Not only does it get me to all the places I need and want to go, but my knowledge of how to maintain it, drive it, and of the rules of the road are necessary for my very safety and life. Now, I could learn much more about my car, and that knowledge might provide some percentage of increase in my safety. I could, in fact, spend years learning all about the technical details of cars, how to fix brakes, engines, etc., and perform all the maintenance myself. Would those years of study provide a sufficient increase in my safety to warrant the investment? I do not think so, even though this example is a life-and-death example.

I hope my POV won't cause you to "write me off" in terms of responses on this forum, because I have such admiration for you and others like you who are not only artists, but technical gurus. :hail: While I desperately need your guidance and advice, I have no aspirations to become a technical guru, myself.

Thanks, again,

 

[Tony Jay]

No one will write you off Sue.
I understand where you are at.
Just a very few years ago I was where you are at in your photographic journey.
I wish that my journey had begun as a teenager (or earlier) in photography but it didn't.
I have had to surmount my learning curve as a mature adult.
I am also self-taught in the sense that I have never attended a course, or hold a relevant qualification, but not in the sense that I have not avidly sought the collective wisdom of others at every opportunity.

To extend the analogy that you reference about driving personally I would put the information that I am sharing on the level of learning how to park properly notwithstanding the fact that sometimes valet parking is available.

Nonetheless assign the information that I am sharing to that of reference.
As time goes by I think you will "grow" into the recommendations that I am making.
It is a process, and nobody can hope to learn this stuff in a day.

I very much look forward to hearing from you asking questions about all sorts of diverse issues.
The vigor with which you are pursuing your interests is heartening indeed.

Tony Jay

 

[SarasotaSunshine]

No one will write you off Sue.
I understand where you are at.

Whew! Thanks, for the encouragement, Tony! I'll keep asking...(and studying).

 

[SarasotaSunshine]

I remember reading some time ago that looking at an image at 50% Magnification or zoom will give a good approximation of how the image will look when printed. The problem is that your monitor is displaying in less than 100 PPI, so it's difficult to really know for sure. But I have used that 50% rule and it has worked for me. I don't have any empirical data or anything else to back up what I remember reading. But that has been the formula I have used and it seems to work.

Thanks, Jim. Do you know if the image size matters when you are looking at the image at 50% magnification? So, for instance, if I want the image to be printed at, say 16" x 20" do I need to set the image size to those dimensions before looking at it at 50% magnification in order to know if it will look pixelated at that size?

 

[clee01l]

... I'd love to take you up on your offer to expand on what you already provided.
...
One of the questions I have is how to best get an on-screen "preview" of the resolution/quality I might expect from a print. I do understand that what I see on-screen is not what the printed version will be, but I'd like to know if there's at least a way to get an on-screen look at whether I can expect a print of a certain size to look good. Is that possible? Would I have to change the image size of the image to the size I want to print and then view it at 100%, or is there a more efficient way to do it without actually changing the image size?

There is a Proofing option in Develop. You need to give the color profile that the printer will use and LR will attempt to mimic the printed results with an on screen look. It will not help you with resolution since all computer monitors are coarse grained compared to fine grain of the print. If you use the guidelines that I gave you earlier for pixel density to print you will be fine with printed resolution and need not worry further. if you have a home printer, yo can make a small crop of a meaningful area of the image and print that on your home printer using the LR Print module. You can do this several times on different parts of the same paper to experiment and get a better idea of the finished print at the print shop or on your local printer without wasting a ton of ink

... I know how to export it out of LR, but don't understand what selections I should be making from LR 5's export dialog to best preserve resolution & quality for the larger prints I typically want. I've currently been sending JPEG format to my print shop, and he has not complained. I'll ask him if he'd prefer TIFF or some other format. Is TIFF better? And what are the selections I should be making in the rest of the fields in that dialog?

Better print shops will prefer TIFF and even specify a color profile to use when saving the image file although most people don't have the background to know how to produce a better image for printing. Unfortunately many print shops don't have people trained to do anything other than a basic 8 bit JPEG.

If you are saving JPEGs, set the quality to 100 to minimize JPEG compression and data loss. DO NOT resize and do not limit the File Size. You are going to send the biggest (in pixels) size image that your print shop can use to produce the specified image size (in inches) If any resizing needs to be done, it is best to let the printer software do it. Output sharpening should be set for Matte or Glossy paper depending upon your print medium. If you are sending TIFF, choose 16 bit, no compression or ZIP compression and the AdobeRGB color space unless the printer specifies a different color profile. AdobeRGB has a larger color envelope than sRGB and printers can handle the larger color space where as computer monitors can barely handle sRGB (the smallest envelop)

 

[davidedric]

Hi Sue,

Ton of great advice there. One thing that I don't think has been mentioned is considering from how far away the image will be viewed. If you were to print 6x4 then it's likely that the viewer will have it under their nose, if 30x20 then more likely across a room. In other words, for a large print the perceived quality may be obtained with lower "resolution". As an analogy think of viewing a painting. Of course you may want your viewer to walk across the room and view the detail. Just something else non-technical :grin: to consider.

Dave

 

[fastbike]

Sue, a couple of quick points. First, your expectation of the print shop may not match theirs. Their expectation may end at : you gave them a file and asked for a 20x30 print and that's what you'll get. That is they will just print as is. Second, you need to understand their equipment and process to some degree to get great, large, prints. This not as important for small prints but is critical for anything larger than, say 8x10. Producing great 20x30 output is not trivial. A couple of 20x30 disappointments on canvas and the $60 will be trivial. A corollary: if your print shop offers 20x30 canvas for cheap money, run away.