Poster Printing

[Kaye]

Hey everyone, need your help again.
I printed the following two photos in 20x30. The first one look awesome. The second one looks awful. Some info is below each photo that might help.



Original Ballyard Photo was around 6.27mb, after cropped is was 2.31 mb. The photos I'll have to look up if you need me to.



The background photo was 6.57 mb for the original. It was 740kb after cropping and using in the above photo. The smaller photos in this one were around an average of 800kb.

Okay my conclusion here is that the photos have to be taken originally closer than those in the second photo (I have started taking mine closer but my friend with the D40 has not). What I need to know is what is the cutoff point for a photo's size to print into a 20x30?

All the sports prints on my flickr have printed great in the 8x10 and 8x12 formats, regardless of the size of the photos, at least so far.

One other thing I need to mention is that the first photo was printed on photo paper and the second one (awful) was printed on poster paper. Don't know if this would effect the quality of the end results or not.

Hope you can help me with understanding this.

[teaking]

what are the resolutions H x W and psyhical print sizes of the images?

And how are you producing the poster, when your cropping the pictures are you resizing to fit the background?
I would suggest where possible crop your images and leave them as big as possible.

If you have to resize anything resize your background for the required finished print size, if it looks like crap after this then use another background if possible.

Paper will make a difference to print quality but im not to sure thats the problem here.

[OsmosisStudios]

Size (in kb) is useless: Pixel size is most important.

[kirbinster]

Pixels are the key as you were just told. The number of pixels per inch will determine how good it looks. For a poster you can probably get by with lower numbers than for a print that will be viewed up close, but there are limits. If you get under 75 pixels per inch it will probably look like crap.

[Kaye]

Should I be looking at the info for the individual photos that make up the poster or the poster as a whole when finished. On flickr:

The Ballyard: (printed great)
File Size: 5.4 MB
File Type: JPEG
MIME Type: image/jpeg
Image Width: 4270
Image Height: 2820
Encoding Process: Progressive DCT, Huffman coding
Bits Per Sample: 8
Color Components: 3
X-Resolution: 300 dpi
Y-Resolution: 300 dpi

The Other one of just Tanner: (printed bad)
File Size: 2.9 MB
File Type: JPEG
MIME Type: image/jpeg
Image Width: 4288
Image Height: 2848
Encoding Process: Baseline DCT, Huffman coding
Bits Per Sample: 8
Color Components: 3
X-Resolution: 300 dpi

Thanks for replying.
Y-Resolution: 300 dpi

[teaking]

After viewing the resolutions for the final posters and file sizes I would ask how you got to the final size in the second poster?

Did you resize any of the pictures and if so roughly by what amount for example 200%.

And also how did you save the final JPEG file did you use 100% or other options available.

[Kaye]

Just wanted to let everyone know that I reprinted the photo on PHOTO paper instead of poster paper and it turned out great. Still not sure why, but glad that was the problem, I guess.

I always save JPEG.

Thanks for all your help and advise.