What size could/should I print my photo?

[Bramsey89]

So I have this photo I really want to print and frame.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/saphric89/ ... 0/sizes/l/

It's downsized on Flickr, but the original is

5.86 MB

3638 x 2425


What is the biggest I could print this and still have it look nice?

[capital]

Without losing quality, you can easily get a satisfying result with a 15x10 inch print @ 240PPI.

18x13 inches @ 180 PPI will start to look a little "digital" without careful processing.

Are you printing this out on your home printer? or you having a lab do this? or what?

[Bramsey89]

I was thinking of doing a 20x30 photo from Snapfish.

I mean, it looks great on my 19x29 monitor...

There's probably a difference between pixels and ink, but shouldn't it be able to print 20x30 if it looks crystal clear on a 20x30 monitor?

[MichaelM]

No, not really. For prints to look reasonable, they need to have a resolution of somewhere around 240-300ppi (pixels per inch). Much less than that and they really start to lose quality. For comparison, computer monitors have a resolution of between 72-96ppi.

[capital]

As Michael indicates, a "print" on screen is not really an accurate depiction of a real print out.

Here's a possible idea though, in photoshop/gimp you can do a 200% enlargement using Bicubic Smoother (best for enlargement) to attain an interpolated uprezzed image.

You will need to do a clarity/contrast/curves/saturation/sharpening on this uprezzed image to get it in shape for printing.

Send this uprezzed file to snapfish and print out at 19x29

and also send them the original file, and have them print out the original file at 15x10.

When you get both back, see if the 200% uprezzed version meets the same level of image quality as does the original file sized print out, if the 200% printout does/or does not, then you have some benchmark for future printing needs.

Incidentally, does snapfish provide you with an ICC profile for their print processing? If they do, you can use that to soft proof and make corrections before actually sending them the file(s) for printing.

[Canon 500D]

It's a nice picture, almost looks slightly cartoon like.

I would think that a 10x8 would be fine, as I have had a 10x8 5MP image printed before, and it looks quite good.