High Quality Big Prints

I have a friend that attended one of my classes and was working on making enlargements of his digital photos for an art show. He asked how to ensure the prints had good quality up large… what numbers in Photoshop would ensure a good large print??

Here’s what KodakGallery Recommends:

In Photoshop, I would suggest 225 PPI/DPI is very safe at the size in inches you’ll be printing… so is Photoshop shows you can be at 16×20″ @ 225 PPI, then you are good.
From practice I know you can go much lower, but I try to not drop below 200 PPI @ the final print size just to be safe. The Kodak info above is quite a bit lower than that, and they are a lap that will make the prints with that minimum. What they say for 16×20″, in Photoshop works out to be 6×9″ @ 200 PPI… once again, these are their ‘minimums’.
If I want to go really big on a photo, I use Genuine Fractals.

But that’s $150 investment.

And you can upsample the image in Photoshop, but using GF is a somewhat higher quality. If you start with a very nice file, with very little artifacts (like film grain), you can go huge in GF. That’s with a low-compression JPeg or RAW file. If you took a tiny JPeg, that was highly compressed in the camera, and maybe wasn’t the sharpest file to begin with, any upsampling to give it more pixel resolution won’t really help.

‘Resampling’ is a checkbox in the Photoshop menus, Image Menu/Image Size. I tell everyone when they are changing a photo for most uses going bigger to have the ‘Resampling’ box unchecked, so that the image quality won’t suffer. You would leave it checked to have Photoshop add some fake pixels to try to make the image have a bit more resolution to print better at a large size. Genuine Fractals is a Photoshop add on that is designed to do the same thing, just a bit better.


As a side note, if you are making an image smaller, you leave the ‘Resampling’ box checked, as you are throwing away pixels and if you don’t have it checked, you are not really making the file size smaller (like for the web, or an e-mail photo).
Your best bet is to just do a test print early at the size you want to use and see how it looks. Maybe one with the normal file, and one with a resampled file to get to 200PPI@ the print size… and see how they compare. Let me know how a test like that goes.

The last point is what sort of camera you use. A file from a digital SLR of any price is much more likely to handle upsampling better than a file from a little snap camera. I discuss that in my class, but the image sensor is soooo much bigger and better in the SLRs (the bigger cameras where you can change lenses), and they invest a lot in how they compress the Jpeg files.

The Art of Copying Art

I had a nice session teaching the Wayne County Arts group how to copy their artwork and tweak it in Photoshop.

I’ll referred to this great article from Macworld.

Here is an article I wrote on the topic you can download Digital Copywork (It was for a magazine, so it’s OK for your personal use, but not for reprinting, etc).

If you went to the talk and want to see the presentation and examples again (or if you just want to see a bit of what I said and some tips, here it is in Flash… fairly big file, so give it time. )

See it HERE… then Click to advance each slide

Snap of me teaching the 3D art portion of the talk (like from the Macworld article) Thanks for the photo Wendy!

Just a quick tip from the talk:
Remember when doing copywork that the Photoshop ‘Auto’ levels and color will often take too much of the nice old ’sepia’ patina out of the image… The answer can be to use Auto Contrast (which leaves your color alone) or better still, no matter what way you adjust the color and contrast, use the ‘Fade’ command to bring it back a bit to that nice, warm look. Many of the photos in history didn’t look stark black and white even when they were created (depending on the tone, paper, process), so by staying a bit warmer on your copywork, you might also be being more true to the original.

Learn with Ken… FIxing Blurry Photos

I just wanted to plug the ‘Learn’ forum section of my web site… It’s where I archive tips and questions that relate to digital photo, doing business with us, Photoshop, etc.

The advantage over there is that it’s all by category and easier to get around than a blog format. Visit my Learn area HERE

Unfortunately, due to spam-bots, I can’t open the forums up for your questions and discussions… but you can always e-mail me questions (contact info is on HuthPhoto.com)

Ooh, the CD longevity topic is great… and I update the Digital Camera Questions topic when clients ask which of the newest cameras they should buy.

Here’s an example from today:

Q: My client/friend Katie asked a great question:

While in the Outer Banks a few weeks ago, my sister took a picture of my family, and it’s a great shot (Xmas card worthy), but it’s blurry for some reason. Do online programs like KodakGallery, Snapfish, etc have tools that help fix that? I guess more importantly, is that even fixable in t[/color]he first place?

A: Ken Says:

You know, that’s a great question…

Sadly, focus is one of the things that really can’t be changed. If something is a little out of focus, there are tricks to make it look more in focus (I take things like glasses and line areas like brows, hair, etc and give them more contrast in Photoshop buy ‘burning’ them)

There are ’sharpening’ filters and ‘definition’ one in Apple’s Aperture. But they are to make things sharper that are already in focus. Mainly the goal there is for them not to get even softer through the printing process… but when you apply it to a blurry photo, it really doesn’t help.

I remember my first weeks at RIT, my prof suggested I go to the chem lab and ask them for some ‘refocusing agent’… Now, I’d been shooting 10 years at that point and knew he was trying to pull one over on the country-boy Freshman… there’s nothing you can do about bad focus… bummer. But I’m sure someone stands in line every year, waiting to get refocusing agent for their bad photos.

I do always suggest to people to take 3 shots of everything (or more!) so this happens less.

There is a new lens setup that focuses at many distances at once and records that… maybe someday snap cameras will inherit that technology and give you a second chance??

ExpoDisc Custom White Balance Tests

Digital camera Auto White Balance is just awful. I’ve never used it on any brand of camera I’ve owned (including my current Canon EOS1D M3). Normally I can guess at a close balance and use the manual setting for Flash, or ‘Cloudy’ on most outdoor shoots. I’ve played around with setting the Custom WB using a white, black or grey card and rarely like the results…. enter the ExpoDisc .

The quick review is that it rocks.

It even tweaks bounce flash color to be more accurate and handles mixed lighting nicely. Because florescent lights are banned from my house (forget going green… I totally hate that harsh, ugly color!)… so I haven’t tried that yet. I can’t wait to, since I shoot in many labs, etc where the florescent mix is weird. Or in totally nasty environments like the Sodium Vapor lights at RIT. This will get me so much closer to correct color on the shoot, and I’ll need less tweaking in Aperture.

Examples of my (very) informal tests.

Auto WB (Natural light from a window, plus the TV glow of a Mario game!) It’s kind of close.

Cloudy WB (what I would have used before)

ExpoDisc Custom WB (much cleaner… look at the white controller and socks)

This is a different day, and different lighting…

Auto WB

ExpoDisc

(This Expo shot is a touch magenta, but I was rushing and be I could have gotten a better reading)

Final Example:

Cloudy WB (the green leaves were trashing the color)….vs…..ExpoDisc

To use it, you put the camera on Manual Focus, and Auto WB. Put the ExpoDisc on your lens and go to where the subject is and aim at the light source, back toward the camera. This is a classic light-metering setup for incident metering (and for you photo-geeks, Incident is why it gets a better read than Reflective metering does off of a grey card.) The ExpoDisc can also be used as a light meter…cool. They have some nice video tutorials HERE. (and know, they haven’t paid me to rave about them! I’m just happy to get better color)

Then in camera, you set that frame as your Custom White Balance and you are off an shooting. For studio Flash, Handheld, you just need to trigger with a remote and get that reading from the subject area facing the flash. I can’t wait to try using it to clean up some off-white ceilings that always taint my bounce flash colors! People really paint ceilings odd colors…

I’ll shout if I have any other notes. I’m very happy so far. It’s a bit pricy for the non-Pro shooter…. Adorama has my size for $105. It’s good to fit your biggest lens, then you can just hold it over smaller lenses. They also have less accurate, less expensive ‘amateur’ versions… as long as your camera cad do a Custom White Balance, you can use this. See HERE

PS: To preserve marital harmony, here’s a shot of my lovely Lisa (and one with Oliver), when I haven’t drug her outside for a photo test…

Photoshop and Leopard

Having a great time with Leopard… Quicklook is amazing (you can see a full-screen look at any document/photo/etc without opening any application…look at a Word doc without opening Word, see a photo preview instantly by clicking the space bar!).

Anyway, I still use Photoshop CS1, since Aperture, I’m more about workflow than the newer gadgets in Photoshop… anyway, if it helps anyone else:
After doing a clean install of CS1 I wanted to get my work spaces back and couldn’t find them in the Photoshop folder with the other settings… They turn out to be in your User folder, then Library, then Preferences and you’ll see a number of those prefs starting with ‘Adobe’ near the top of your list.

Moving those from my previous folder (you did back up, didn’t you??!) to the new folder brought back my beloved Work Spaces.

Everything is running much faster under Leopard and there are only a very few minor bugs (and OKI hasn’t put out new drivers for my office printer yet).

I’m really enjoying it!

Learn with Ken: Cameras, Workflow, Photoshop

Here’s what’s next if you enjoy learning from Ken… These classes are great—you don’t have to leave the office, just use the ‘net and take an hour to update your skills.

Through the Eli Research Audio Educator system, I’m teaching 3 classes:

Digital Camera Class (What to buy, what features matter, how to save money… everything for buying and understanding the important features of digital cameras)
Wednesday, September 19, 2007 **Next Wednesday!
11:00 am ET
Info and signup HERE

(We’ll cover important tips… like taking your lens cap off

Digital Workflow Class (What to do with all of those photos you have! Find them fast, keep it simple and safe with backups, etc)
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
11:00 am ET
Info and signup HERE

Next Step in Photoshop (The distilled tips I have for working on photos)
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
1 pm ET
e-mail me for info… it’s not online yet.

•••Discount for Clients•••
I was able to get the Audio Educator folks to give my clients a $20 discount.
Please contact me if you are a client and I’ll send you the code.

Also, the prices are per location—you use a speakerphone for the audio and then watch on the internet… so if you have several people attending, or your whole office, it’s a pretty good deal. And I do a Q&A at the end, so you can ask your questions live.

Please shout with questions!