Large prints

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RON_RIP

Senior Member
I never print larger than the 13x19 size of my Canon. Now one of my clients wants to do a large photo mural printed on ceramic tile to grace the entry of their business establishment. I took what I feel is a decent shot of downtown Pittsburgh during the golden hour with my D7000. After cropping I was Left with a l3 megapixel. image. After editing I exported the file out of Aperture as a 16 bit Tiff which read that it was a 78.6 mb file.
My question is how large a mural would such a file size support without degrading the image? I suspect they want a larger mural than the file will support but I do not know that for sure.
Hope some fellow Nikonites can give me some guidance on this problem.
 
Bob Blaylock

Bob Blaylock

Senior Member
RON said:
I never print larger than the 13x19 size of my Canon. Now one of my clients wants to do a large photo mural printed on ceramic tile to grace the entry of their business establishment. I took what I feel is a decent shot of downtown Pittsburgh during the golden hour with my D7000. After cropping I was Left with a l3 megapixel. image. After editing I exported the file out of Aperture as a 16 bit Tiff which read that it was a 78.6 mb file.
My question is how large a mural would such a file size support without degrading the image? I suspect they want a larger mural than the file will support but I do not know that for sure.
Hope some fellow Nikonites can give me some guidance on this problem.
Click to expand...

What is the resolution of the cropped portion that you intend to use? How many pixels wide by how many pixels high?

And how big a “mural” do your clients want to make of it?

Really, the math is pretty simple. If your image is X pixels along one dimension, and your clients want the image to be rendered at a size that is Y inches along that dimension, then then the image will be rendered at X/Y pixels per inch (PPI).

The image won't really lose quality as it is rendered at larger sizes. Someone standing back some distance from the mural-sized image, to have it fill the right amount of his field of view, will see the image at the same quality as if he were looking at it printed on a piece of paper, much closer, to fill about the same amount of his field of view.

What difference will be noticeable will be to someone looking more closely at the mural-sized image, being able to see individual pixels. The PPI figure will have a lot to do with this.
 
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Rick M

Senior Member
I've had a 8mb image on a billboard on Interstate 81. As Bob said, large images from a distance will look appropriate.
 
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Bill16

Senior Member
Oh I get it. Distance from the print in proportion to it's size keeps it looking right! Very interesting stuff! Awesome! Thanks guys! I might be able to use the info someday! :)
 
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