Uprezzing for a client, help!

I've got a licensing agent who needs to have Hi Res images uprezzed to 24x36 (poster size) @ 300 dpi, what is the best way to go about this? I have never "rezzed" up an image before and all I have to work with is PS 5.5

I shoot with a Nikon D300, will the 12mp resolution of this camera be sufficient for their needs? He says they "MUST LOOK GOOD" after they are rezzed up. I have tried going in increments of 10% in PS but the resulting image is quite blurry after I get it up to that size, even starting from a really sharp image.

Any help would be much appreciated.

I would check with the printer who will be printing them which you may already know. The only reason I bring this up is that with for example MpixPro (and there are many others I'm sure) their minimum resolution is 100 dpi for quality prints, they use a lightjet printer. I personally have had many 24x36 prints made from a 10mp camera with final resolution at 107 dpi and they are great. With many high end printers they will prefer to do the final resolution themselves for the best result. They recommend you don't do any sharping to the file as well. I have never been disappointed with the results of large prints and neither have any customers.

Also I would not get to worried about what you are seeing on your monitor after doing an interpolation to a larger file size, it's going to look somewhat blurry because of how you are viewing it (on a monitor). A high end printing process will produce better results. Also don't hesitate to ask a print lab for an example test print first.

24x36 at 300dpi is about 78mpx so of course 12mpx is not enough. Genuine Fractals by onOne Software (now changed name) is a good app for PS to upsize. You can also try a regular upsize by incremental steps if you upsize in 10% increments the result is usually better than doing it at once.

Having said that I agree that the specs are probably overdimensioned.

Luis - Although I haven't used it, I would not recommend Genuine Fractals as a general solution - there are plenty of times when simply using Photoshop is as good if not better. See these fairly extensive comparisons :

It's Bigger, But Is It Better?
It's Bigger, But Is It Better? Part II
It's Bigger, But Is It Better? Part III

And the incremental upsizing in PS should not be any better than doing it in one step. That was an anomaly of an old version that has long been modified now, and wasn't universal to begin with. (Although 5.5 is pretty old - might be worth doing just to check.)

Zack - I'd suggest a straight bicubic in PS, or Lanzcos in IrfanView (a free download - google it) as your simplest, best bets. That should always be followed by extra sharpening and maybe local contrast enhancement - unless your printer wants to do the sharpening themselves. Don't get too crazy - it can be pretty straightforward. And careful when viewing on your monitor if you're going to 100%. That's a big enlargement and probably won't look good blown up that much. I usually try to size the image so that it's about the same size on screen that it will be in print, and then I also look at it a bit smaller.

Zack,

If the client wants 'nose-to-the-print' sharpness and detail, you can't get there starting with a 12Mpx image. However, assuming the viewing distance will be several feet, or farther, from the print, a print resolution of 100-150 dpi should work.

Things to watch out for... Noise: Reduce it as much as you can without sacrificing detail, before resizing. Sharpness: Oversharpening (at the print size) will kill it. Find out from the printer how this needs to be done.

If possible, have the printer print the image on a glossy paper. Prints will on glossy paper paper have higher apparent sharpness. Fuji Crystal Archive Glossy is a great paper. It is a true photographic paper that is developed in chemistry. It is the most common paper used with a Light Jet or Chromira enlarger.

Uprezzing an image is always a crap shoot, regardless of whether you use the PS algorithms or a plugin such as Genuine Fractals.

You might want to to check with Aspen Creek Photo (a division of West Coast Imaging) I believe they have a current sale on large prints.

--P

Many commercial printers use their own printer RIP software to resample images upward and have been viewed by many users as far superior to regular software solutions. One outfit that I have personal experience with in this area is El-Co Color Labs, where I had a 20" x 30" enlargement created from an unresized 6MP DSLR image file. The results were nothing short of amazing! Bear in mind that the image quality was optimum (RAW, tripod, good quality lens, etc.). At those prices I had little to lose trying it, and that enlargement still hangs framed to this day.

Hey guys thanks for the replies, the client actually needs them to be upresed to "24x36 at 300 dpi", and said, and I quote: "start off with quality you get quality printing", although uprezzing them myself seems to only decrease quality, but that is how they want them. I would think it would be best to have the ones printing the posters to upsize as I'm sure they use more sophisticated techniques. I tried uprezzing a few images today and had some 100% crops printed at 5x7 and they looked OK, slightly blurry but you couldn't tell from a foot or more away. I'll send a few of these samples to the client and see if it will be sufficient.

Zack, have you considered a 3rd party utility like Perfect Resize (formerly Genuine Fractals), Qimage, or Blowup? I use Qimage for both printing and uprezzing and find the results to be excellent.

I see some negative comments about Perfect Resize (formerly Genuine Fractals), but I've had good luck with using them. I now size all my prints using it before I send to the lab. I don't know much about the art of printing, so for me the simplicity is the selling point. I'm pretty sure they offer a free trial. You might consider downloading it and giving it a go. If the results don't look better than what you've been trying, then you can just let the trial expire.

I don't think there's anything wrong with using Qimage or Perfect Resize or Blowup or any of the others. It's just when I've tried them (very little) and from everything I've read, they don't really do a better job - in general - than a normal PS bicubic resizing, even when really pixel peeping. There are a few cases where they may have a real advantage, but I think for most people who don't resize a lot, just using PS is the best bet. (Well, as stated, using custom printing software - a RIP - may actually be best, but that doesn't seem to be an option here.)

It wouldn't hurt to try them on a trial basis, of course!

I would talk to the printer, as someone else suggested. The labs I use recommend NOT uprezzing, just send them the full rez, native file from my camera, regardless of print size. I've made 36 inch prints from my D200 and they looked great. Haven't done that big from my D300 yet, but expect they would look even better. I didn't uprez, I let the lab do it.

I. too have used Prefect Resize (formerly Genuine Fractals) with great success. You should talk to them about whether it works as a plugin with PS 5.5. Just yesterday I took a 1" x1" crop out of an 11 x 16 and converted it to a 20 x 20 at 360 dpi. You really can't do this with just the PS resize function. I use Perfect Resize several times a week. NOTE: It's slow!

I think you can do a free 30-day trial with it, by the way.

Hey Bob - I'd love to see 100% crop comparisons of the Perfect Resize result compared to a Bicubic PS result.

Also, are you saying that you took a 1"x1" area and enlarged it to 20"x20"? What were the pixel dimensions of the 1"x1"?