I am going to take some of my files in for printing. I have never printed anything, so these are real noob questions.
First, I have exported them from LR as Tiffs and I selected output sharpening to matte. 300 DPI
I have cropped these photos, but the aspect is the same as shot out of the camera.
They are all landscape orientation.
My question is, what size paper will these files print on without cropping - 5 X 7? 8 X 10? I'm really clueless about this. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
For maximum good quality for printing, divide the pixel size of the length and width by 300. That will give you the size in inches that the images can be printed.
You do not need 300 pixels/inch.
For most images 240 is plenty, and, depending on quality of the image, appropriate sharpening, subject, medium and viewing distance 180 pixels/inch may be just fine. You have a 6 MP image. I have some beautiful prints at 12x18 from this native size.
As far as making an 8x10, you will have to crop your image to fit the new format, since the native format is 2x3 (which would get you to 8x12 or 6.7x10).
Open your image in LR, go to the crop tool, select the appropriate aspect ratio (4x5) or enter a custom aspect ratio if necessary. Then view your image with the crop tool active so that you can see what elements will need to be sacrificed as you go from a somewhat longer horizontal image or taller vertical image to something a bit more square.
Generally little need to export as TIFF for printing unless your printer asks for it. Most will want a high quality jpeg.
Personally I prefer to use Qimage for my printing, its the best interpolation package out there..and its not very expensive either. Qimage is recognised internationally as a superb program ( no I'm not an agent )
when you are printing from qimage you choose the paper size via the printer properties and then position the image on the paper within the progrm, you resize to your exact requirements by draging the frame larger or smaller.. it shows you the print size of the output...obviously you are restricted by your aspect ratio. The print sharpening and the colour profile is selected by you at this stage too.
if you are preparing a file for external printing , you can resize to your exact requirements in photoshop, I do the print sharpening as well and do print proofs at home with crops at full size to check that I have the print sharpening done correctly , then I ask the file to be printed by the printing company exactly as provided.
If you are using a low end printing service, it is very likely that they will have some image resizing to fit their 'standard outputs , 'enhancement ' and sharpening process occuring on your images automatically .. just find out what the workflow is for them
it is also likely that they will only accept sRGB images,
for me... all of those things are to be avoided.
One way of getting around this is to put the image within a template of a set aspect ratio that suits the printing company and provide a thick black and white strip by the side of your image that can be cropped off later. This provides the software with all the dynamic range its 'looking' for so its happy not to change the mid tone which can be disasterous for a high or low key image ..
I do this when printing a lot of small cheap images for cards but don't want my images messed about with.. a cheap and cheerful fix
I am basically experimenting here. Some of these images are Head shots and they will need to print at 8 X 10. So, I need to change the crop. I am just taking them to a low-end printing service. This is basically to see if I want to do a larger print for hanging.
I will second Jane's recommendation. Use Qimage for printing. It greatly simplifies the process and allows you to save settings into templates for reuse later on. Resizing and cropping and paper layouts are very simple.
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