Vintage work crew photos

[PJs]

What DPI do you need for a decent print photograph?

Technically Jon, digital picture files are considered "Print Ready" at 300PPI (Pixels/in). Printers use DPI as it represents Dots/in, as in most inkjets use a droplet (Dot) form of some type. Laserjets are another story as they use a coronal process on a roller and typically considered to be about 600ppi even in color.

Like Frank says you can get a decent-ish print at 200ppi but the eye will notice the aberrations. 300ppi is at the edge of what most people can discern in clarity and has been the standard for a long time. Up-scaling anymore than 10-15% will blow it to smithereens and a waste of ink, imho.

I did a 4/0, 4' x 8' vinyl poster a while back for a client that was "Print Ready" but it was required to be 1200PPI in order to scale it to that size in good resolution to the eye. It had a couple of pictures and a Vector Logo I did for him prior but the pictures had to be scanned a 1200ppi, cleaned up, adjusted, then inserted in order to be good visually at distance. Another thing that helps the printing processes is to Flatten the artwork and usually required for print houses. In this case I had a lot of drop shadows to highlight the logo, and some text as well as some other layer overlay effects...without flattening most printers misinterpret those opacities and colors giving a very bad effect, printed. To give a clue the restoration I did of my GGGPa tintype (~1.75x2.25) I scanned it as a 1600ppi TIFF file, just to get it big enough to print a 300ppi 4x6.

Imho, the only way to get these to a decent quality wall picture would be to save and print them as 300PPI and send the print to a Scan House (lots out there) and let them scan it at say 2400-3600ppi. These scan houses can do the whole process, much like Chip and Joan did on their HGTV series with the split rolling frame Before shots, but on a TV budget they could afford ~$1000per. I'm sure they were shot with a quality DLSR Or DLST and sent out for production. My hit is those were probably 150dpi prints on canvas or vinyl. Also keeping in mind when you scan to these resolutions, all the aberrations are enhanced as well as Interpolated above the original.

I had the good fortune to get to work with a local printing wizard who taught me a lot in the beginning. He help a lot, particularly in developing some of the larger giclee's I've done. Those were done in AI (Adobe Illustrator) but had certain picture elements in some that had to be gotten to at least 300ppi to print...my largest was a 30" x 48" on canvas and I gave him the file at 1200ppi to run through their commercial grade High End large format HP plotter.

Also keep in mind that Jpgs are RGB and most inkjets run a CMYK cartridge setup and the printer takes up the difference which is considerable. Not so much on Sepia or B/W (which I use TIFF format) but it does make a big difference on rendered color perception.

Hope that helps and didn't go completely off the TMI rails.

PJ

And for the next DIY X/Y plotter project...just keep in mind the DPI/PPI still needs to be correct.

[Frank S]

An interlocked cribbing trestle. Now that is 1 super strong structure, but it could have been made much stronger and more stable had they taken the time to notch a few of the courses of the logs . A few lateral diagonal stay logs would have insured the structure cold not shift sideways.

[Jon]

My pipe dream is to have these types of photos somehow painted or similarly imaged onto a garage wall.

Like when you go to some museums, and they have lifesize black-and-white photos on the wall. How are they doing that?

[Frank S]

My pipe dream is to have these types of photos somehow painted or similarly imaged onto a garage wall.

Like when you go to some museums, and they have lifesize black-and-white photos on the wall. How are they doing that?

Well you probably couldn't do it this way LOL

But this way could work if you did it is reasonable sized sections at a time
https://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/ma...ansfer-pumpkin

[Jon]

Thanks! Didn't know there was that much to it. Got the idea from looking at all of those old Mesta factory photographs. Would love to look at a wall of my garage, and see those old machines as if they were in the distance on the same floor. Although, admittedly, this is perhaps not my single most important project right now.

[PJs]

Thanks! Didn't know there was that much to it. Got the idea from looking at all of those old Mesta factory photographs. Would love to look at a wall of my garage, and see those old machines as if they were in the distance on the same floor. Although, admittedly, this is perhaps not my single most important project right now.

That is a great idea! I was thinking a collage of some type but a perspective from floor level...awesome.

[Jon]

Not sure where I got the idea. I think I saw it first at a museum or airport. Like on a big wall at a passenger terminal, or behind a museum display or something. And you know how there are lifesize sepia or black-and-white photographs with people in them, maybe a timeline or historical data or explanation superimposed on it. I'm sure we've all seen this concept. Those big honkin' Mesta photographs are just dying to be reborn like that.

If that isn't really doable, I will settle for a photograph-topped cappuccino made with a pic of a Heavy Press.

[ranald]

Not sure where I got the idea. I think I saw it first at a museum or airport. Like on a big wall at a passenger terminal, or behind a museum display or something. And you know how there are lifesize sepia or black-and-white photographs with people in them, maybe a timeline or historical data or explanation superimposed on it. I'm sure we've all seen this concept. Those big honkin' Mesta photographs are just dying to be reborn like that.

If that isn't really doable, I will settle for a photograph-topped cappuccino made with a pic of a Heavy Press.

Hey Jon, your cuppa could be of a top dog with saw in hand & when you reach the dregs the under-dog would appear.

Did you locate my lost post or should I simply redo it? (not that you have nothing to do-ha ha). I'm a one fingered typist & often posts pop up that weren't there when I started typing!LOL.

[PJs]

LOL on the heavy press cap!

Got to thinking, as I've seen custom wall paper from pics. Just a quick search and this popped up. https://www.megaprint.com/wallpaper.php

Here is a link to the pricing...don't know the size of your wall. https://www.megaprint.com/prices-sizes-prints.php

This is for a 8' x 12' smooth wallpaper. Not bad $$ for an all out man cave, but I would have to chat with them about resolution.



Another possibility would be a Halftone printing of some type where the resolution isn't as high. Old school but still around.

PJ

P.S. let me know about the PM I sent, and I'd be happy to prep the artwork for you.

[bruce.desertrat]

Looking at the pictures on that site, they're using a large format HP inkjet very similar the one we have (a Z6200); it's max color resolution is 2400 x 1200 "optimized dpi"; it makes pretty good looking images from standard files. (300ppi or lower.) The printer driver does a lot of pretty smart interpolation to achieve that "optimized dpi" bit.

Their FAQ gives you an idea of what they expect to be working with.

Some day I'm going to get around to printing out a few of my photos on it, then I'll be able to definitively tell.