Question About Blowing Up a Photo!

[sophiadanielle]

Hi, I have a question... obviously...
The youth group at my church is working on new art for the youth room and they want to use pictures I have taken over the years. They are blowing up the photos at a professional place and are getting them in 7x8 ft and sizes around that.

For the majority of these photographs I was using my Canon Rebel Xt (I only recently upgraded to the 7D), so I'm wondering if the files from the Xt will be large enough to blow them up to those sizes without the quality being very poor.

The place that's printing them can show us what it would look like, but it would be helpful if we could rule those photographs out altogether if it just won't work at all.

Can anyone out there help me?
Thanks!

[OsmosisStudios]

7x8 ft is large: Depending on viewing distance, you may or may not have enough pixels.

[drr0b]

Originally Posted by OsmosisStudios

7x8 ft is large: Depending on viewing distance, you may or may not have enough pixels.

However, you could probably get away with upscaling your pictture until you do have enough. I'm no expert, but there are seveal competing ways to do this.

To give you some idea of what is needed, a full size 7D image at monitor resolution (72 pixels per inch) gives you a photo size of 6 feet by 4 feet.

[OsmosisStudios]

Originally Posted by drr0b

However, you could probably get away with upscaling your pictture until you do have enough. I'm no expert, but there are seveal competing ways to do this.

Upscaling works well if you're viewing things from very large distances. If this is going to be in a fairly small room, or in a gallery environment, upscaling just wont cut it.

[Doug Pardee]

Originally Posted by sophiadanielle

it would be helpful if we could rule those photographs out altogether if it just won't work at all.

If viewed from an appropriate distance where one sees the entire image (10 feet or so, in this case), 8 megapixels is more than enough. However, if viewed from a closer distance, it might not be.

The XT produces images that are 3456x2304 pixels. Assuming that you're going to be putting the 2304 pixels across 7 feet (84 inches), that's 27.43 ppi.

So crop out a telling section of one or two images at a size of 274x219 pixels, print it at 8x10, and see what you think when you view it from the expected distance.