what DPI for printing?

Brian Moore

Moderator
A friend has asked if she could purchase an image I took of her daughter backstage during one of The Nutcracker performances. I told her no. Actually my answer was "Hell No!" But, I'm happy to give her a copy.

But these things confuse me. I scanned the original 35mm neg at 600 dpi, which is what I normally do. But I always scan at original size.

I plan to re-scan the image for optimum printing resolution, then send it to have it printed. I'm thinking 8x10 maybe.

Can anyone recommend what DPI or size I should re-scan at?

Thank you.
 
I try to print at 300 pixels pers inch. An 8 x 10 inch image would have to be 2400 pixels by 3000 pixels.

I'm sort of repeating what Larry and Pete said.
 
The net is full of untested mythology. Just because something seems reasonable, do not accept it without first testing for yourself. Bizarre dreams do not necessarily translate into better prints.

One fellow pontificated that a minimum of 720 PPI was required for large format printers, but 1440 PPI was the absolute minimum for desktop printers. Wrong. I did a print at each resolution with my desktop photo printer, and there was zero visible difference. To follow up, I did a 720 vs 360 PPI comparison, and again no visible difference. Then a pair at 360 and 240 PPI. I showed it to a lot of people and perhaps one in five said they could see a slight difference, but none would say which was the better. With a pair at 360 and 180 PPI, finally the higher resolution was visible at reading distance. At arm's length the difference vanished. Most people would find a snapshot-sized print at 120 PPI quite acceptable if they did not have a higher resolution print to compare it to.

Another self-appointed authority postulated that since Epson printers are based upon a head-movement of 720 PPI, that whatever resolution you chose must be a true factor of 720. As it happens, the nearest prime to 360 is 359 which should have produced a disaster. No visible difference. Same results at 180 and 179 PPI. No prime when compared to the factor of 720 seemed to have the slightest effect.

Dealing with up to 11 discrete inks with variable sized droplets, and the ability to place up to 5760 splats per inch at high precision, the drivers are much more sophisticated than such simplistic formulae would indicate. Given Photoshop's print facility, one can take an image of any size and tell it to print at any paper size. The driver calculates where each little splat should be located for an ultimately continuous tone result. It is easy to comprehend megapixels as a way of comparing cameras, and many take it as the only way. I feel that it is one of the least important factors. Realize when you are watching the big screen HDTV, with its incredible detail and sharpness, you are watching a two megapixel image. 1920 × 1080 = 2,073,600 pixels.
 
Thank you, Ralph. And thanks again, Larry.

Given Photoshop's print facility, one can take an image of any size and tell it to print at any paper size.

So Larry, what would be the result if I took my original size file, which Photoshop tells me is 828x528 pixels at a resolution of 600, and printed say a 4 x 6 or even 8 x 10? Can expect to get an acceptable image?

Thank you again.
 
At 828x528, it would definitely be light on detail. Acceptable is a value judgement. A couple of examples from the early days—my first camera was the classic Nikon Coolpix 990, which Time Magazine named "Machine of the Year". It was only 3.34MP, and CF cards were small capacity and very expensive.

Over dinner, I was running out of card space and reduced my resolution to 1024×768, and happened to get a lovely portrait of a friend. I printed it 8×10 and it remains on the family living-room wall to this date. Her father was a noted expert on parrots, and a full resolution (2048 x 1536) shot of a macaw's head caught his fancy. He borrowed the file and had a 24×36 print made from it against my advice. A few years later, I was in his city and visited him. The print looked remarkably good from anywhere in the room. At reading distance sharp detail in the feathers was lacking compared to say a D800, but still it was an amazingly acceptable image. Resolution was less than 60 PPI!

People seem to think that there is an absolute threshold below which a picture somehow falls apart. It simply does not exist. Clearly an image at 240 PPI will be more detailed than one at 120 PPI, but it may take a direct comparison to notice. A portrait will certainly be a lot more forgiving than a forest landscape. More resolution than 240 PPI may not gain you anything, but it won't hurt anything either. I now shoot at 12 and 16MP, so when I print, I use the whole image, or what is left after cropping, and scale it to the paper size.

Scanning for a print, I would go for 240 or higher simply because it will give me all the detail I can see and it is no bother to do so. If someone came with a 90 PPI file and asked me to print it, I would do so, after saying that it will be somewhat thin on detail.

Viewing distance is key. As I mentioned, at reading distance I could see a slight advantage to 240 PPI over 180. At arm's length the difference vanished. With large prints, the resolution of the eye falls off more rapidly than detail when viewed at a proper distance. If a print looks good at reading distance, when greatly enlarged, it may look even better. For decades, Kodak mounted an 18'×60' photo mural high above the concourse of New York's Grand Central Station. Close up, it had dye clouds the size of tennis balls, but from the floor, the murals looked crisp and of very high quality. In the beginning, they used large format custom-built cameras, but the last ones were done with 35mm cameras!

Since MTF curves and DxO Marks are incomprehensible to most people, selling cameras by megapixels has been the chosen way. A 16MP camera is not automatically twice as good as an 8MP camera. Sensor quality, AA filter, lens quality, lens aperture, shooting off tripod in perfect light—or not, subject and camera movement, skill in processing and printmaking, all are every bit as important. Above all, a decent print of compelling content will trump a perfect—but boring—print every time.
 
Hey Larry, that answer was utterly brilliant & is what I have been saying for years, megapixels in cameras is mainly there to sell them ! What I used to call the Medallion man syndrome, they have to have the biggest, shiniest newest camera NOW LOL.Like Larry has pointed out it is all down to viewing distance in the end & as a former photo lab printer it really got to me when customers got the print & viewed it from about 1 inch from there eye & said it looks a bit grainy, I used to ask if they had a driving licence & if so how on earth did they get it with eyesight that bad they had to look so closely LOL.
Well done again Larry.
 
Everyone has made some great points. For most of us the modern cameras have overkill as far as the mega pixels are concerned. But if you want to print large (30 inches or more on a side) or you want to crop an image and still print fairly big then higher megapixels are a real advantage. But again, for most photographers 18 or more megapixels in a camera is overkill. But as Andy says, it does sell cameras.

As far as the minimum pixels per inch in a color image, I agree that it is somewhat subjective. I try to print my images at 300 ppi. But when I don't quite have the required number of pixels in my image I'll go lower. Some printers (mostly very high end commercial ones) have excellent extrapolation software allowing wonderful images at lower pixel densities. I've had good results printing color images with pixel densities as low as 225 ppi.

Viewing distance is also extremely important in how nice an image looks. I was asked once by a client to provide a ten foot wide transparency. I was able to get the transparency made and the resulting pixel density was only around 150 ppi. But the image was going to be mounted in a light box in an airport and the typical viewing distance would be around 30 feet.
 
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