Photography

24 readers

1 users here now

A place to politely discuss the tools, technique and culture of photography.

This is not a good place to simply share cool photos/videos or promote your own work and projects, but rather a place to discuss photography as an art and post things that would be of interest to other photographers.

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

communick@viewfinder.pro

Higher resolution is printing more pixelated (alien.top)

submitted 11 months ago by Various-Leadership68@alien.top to c/photography@viewfinder.pro

8 comments fedilink hide all child comments

So I don’t know a whole lot about printing, but I have read that you should export for printing at 300 ppi resolution. When I did this the photo I was exporting went haywire. It cropped my photo cutting a lot off, and it turned SO pixelated. When I took it back to the original 72 ppi it looks significantly better. This print is going to be 27in by 39in. Which at the 72 ppi it’s still pixelated enough that I don’t love it but it’s nowhere as bad as it was at the 300. What am I doing wrong? What’s a way to clear the pixelation on the print?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] whatstefansees@alien.top 1 points 11 months ago

That 300 dpi is a bit of a legend and not really necessary.

first read this https://www.claremon.co.uk/what-is-dpi-in-printing/
Then you must understand that the necessary or optimum resolution is very much depending on the distance the beholder stands from the print. Any legal or A4 sized print will mostly be looked at from a distance of 50 cm or 18 inches. A door-sized print that covers a huge wall, say 6' by 4' or 180*120 cm will probably be looked at from a distance of 2m / 7' at least. So there is no need.
Rule of thumb: If you halve the distance, you must square the number of pixels (double vertically and double horizontally = square)
I have a number of prints in 90*60 cm (3 feet by 2) and a number of 120*80 cm (four feet by 2 1/2 or 48 by 32 inches) on my walls. They are printed in 160 and 128 dpi and they look perfectly sharp and not the least pixelated out of a 24 MP camera. The bigger ones hang on a wall behind/over a sofa/couch, so you can't really get closer than maybe 1,20m or 4' except if you climb and stand on that sofa.
In short: the necessary resolution depends on the distance of the beholder as much as on the print size. The smaller the photo, the closer people get their noses ove the print and the finer the resolution should be.

Disclaimer: I know that 50 cm aren't 18" and 2m aren't 7' - but those numbers are close enough and we all can imagine them without a second thought, so I ... went for "the next best number"