printing (the procedure)

[kieron]

Hi all,

am new to this as have just received my S2 Pro in the post yesterday. Very happy with it as well. I have a couple of questions about printing as this is still a mystery to me.

What procedure do people use for creating large size prints. If take 12mb file from my s2 and then do image resize and select 300 dpi I end up with a print size of about 14x11. Others are talking about much larger print sizes. Can I print something at full A3 for instance or would I need to send to a specialist lab.

If I use a specialist lab, do I send them the raw CCD or Tiff or can they work off the JPEG and what do they do to create large size pictures or even posters.

Thanks for your feedback everyone.

Take it easy

Kieron

[surfworx]

Greetings,

I print Lambda prints up to 100x100cm's, and that's shooting at 6Megapixels. I use Adobe Elements to crop to the print size I want, at 300dpi. No problems so far, what I see on my monitor I pretty much get in print.

I leave all settings in camera at Off, like color sat, contrast, sharpening. I do it all post shoot - it seems to allow more flexibility. There's also a default focus setting, closest point focus or something, you may want to turn off if your images seem out of focus.

Happy snapping!

Derrick
www.surfworx.com.au

[snapthepicture]

Hey,
First you need to find out what your lab is using for their digital printing. The two main machines that are used to expose the paper before the RA4 process are, The Durst Lampda and the Lightjet. The Durst is the better of the two due to the software nesting images up and prints at 200 dpi @ 100%. The Lightjet also does a wonderful job and prints at 150% @ 100%. I don't care if you send thema 500 meg file, when it is ripped to the machine, it will break it down to the previous mentioned rez's. Then the machine interpolates it to 400dpi for the Lambda and 300 for the Lightjet. Both machines print on 50" width Paper rolls and lenght is 250 feet rolls. Now, as far as what you can get with an S2 camera. I have seen Hassablad looking images from the S2 at 24x30". They were shot at 6.1 megapixels in jpeg mode. Then converted and resized with Genuin Fractals. You can do the same quality bump with photoshop, (debated) Put the image in PSD format and bump it up in 10% increments. Also to sharpen, put the image in "lab" mode, select the "lightness" channel and then do the USM. Much more forgiving on pixelization. All above processes are RGB. TIFF is gonna be the better format on either machine. Jpg do good as well though. Today's technologies on the Durst interpolate incredible. www.thecolorplace.com

Bruno
http://www.snapthepicture.com/composite.jpg