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printing panoramic images

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Flat4matt 07 Mar 2013
I took some panos when skiing in france and fancy having one printed. I took them on my little canon g12 so not mind blowing quality unfortuantely but good enough I think.

The file in particular is,

Pixel dimentions,
89.3m
13407 pixels x 2327 pixels
180dpi

Document size,
74.483 inches x 12.928 inches

File size 15.2mb

What size print should I be hoping for out of this to keep everything sharp etc?
Ideally I'd like to go for about a 50" wide by around 10". Would this be possible bearing in mind its only 15mb?

Where do you get yours printed?

Any help would be appreciated.

Cheers
Matt

 Nutkey 07 Mar 2013
In reply to Flat4matt:
Taken on a nice sunny day? Probably. You can have 15mb of data, or 15mb of noise.... Print out a cropped section of it and see what that looks like.

The biggest I've ever printed is a 30x20 poster using Photobox (33"x23"), from a scan of slide film at 4000dpi - so that would be max 192dpi (I almost certainly cropped a bit)

 Danzig 08 Mar 2013
In reply to Flat4matt: try your local Costco for printing, great results and even better prices.
Flat4matt 08 Mar 2013
In reply to Flat4matt:
It was a nice clear day with inversions below.
Looking at it 100% there is abit of noise but not massivley noticable.

Also whats peoples thoughts on printing black and white on metallic print?
 Hannes 08 Mar 2013
In reply to Flat4matt:
> It was a nice clear day with inversions below.
> Looking at it 100% there is abit of noise but not massivley noticable.
>
> Also whats peoples thoughts on printing black and white on metallic print?

Have you stuck the pictures through some kind of editing software? Programmes like lightroom will let you manually select parts you want to decrease the noise in as doing it blanket will often result in a bit of smudging.

As for black and white, landscapes in black and white are a bit more difficult and the play between light and shadow is more important than it would be in colour. What does it look like in b&w? Metallic prints can come out really well but canvas will help hide more imperfections.
 Adam Long 08 Mar 2013
In reply to Flat4matt:

Short answer is you'll probably be fine.

Long answer:
The only bit that really matters here is the dimensions in pixels and the pixels per inch (ppi). dpi is really a printing term that gets misused.

You can print at anything between 180 ppi and 300 ppi and get acceptable quality, depending on what you accept. Magazine quality is around 250 dpi, with the nicest book printing being nearer 300. Below 200 you have the risk of pixelation being visible - jagged edges etc. You can use software to scale up the photo to get more pixels, but do too much and quality declines.

In my experience Photoshop generates a load of extra pixels when stitching anyway, so I avoid scaling them up further.

You starting with a big file so no problems there. The reason it is 'only' 15Mb is likely due to the fact it is a jpeg, which compresses the file size. Scenes with a lot of snow or blue sky can be compressed much more effectively than those full of ine detail.

Digital printing generally gives two options: inkjets (like your home printer but bigger) or lightjets, which expose traditional photographic paper by scanning laser. Lightjets rarely go much bigger than 24" wide so you'll be looking at inkjets.

Inkjets give you a range of paper choices - photo-type papers, canvas, or textured papers - usually cotton.

With lightjets or inkjets with photo papers you'll need 250ppi+, and you'll get a result like a traditional photo.

With textured papers or canvas you can get good results printing below 200 ppi, down to about 150 ppi. I've sold a few of my big panoramics printed at wide like this, and they look great. With big prints folk don't tend to get so close anyway.

I get lightjet prints done by peak imaging, and inkjet prints by Inframe in Sheffield. I'd try to find an inkjet printer you can visit and test print a portion of the print first. Prints rarely look identical to what you see on screen.

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