Topic awaiting preservation: Printing large pixel wallpapers....

If I wanted to print my wallpapers out where should I go to get a high quality color print. I am thinking 300dpi would produce a high enough quality pic, but I don't know. What dpi should I use if my image is only 1600x1200?

please help.

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cheney

Where you would go to get a high quality color print mostly has to do with where you are.
I would guess that all major cities and even some smaller towns would have some sort of print shop...look in the phone book.

As you your second question, that depens on how big you want your print.
If you want your print to be 4" by 3", then that comes out to be...(doing the division)...400.
dpi stands for dots per inch, so really it's simple math.
There is also ppi. Often times people use these synonomously, but they really aren't. One of them has to do with print...one for something else. I don't really know.
Maybe Jeni or some other print guru could help us all out with the details???

mobrul

Mobrul gives good advice. Where you are, what type of printout you want; these are all factors. You can print out your own color proof from your printer...You could go to a service bureau and have it output on a color laser printer (usually around 400 dpi)...or if you want to spend lots of money and have a really pretty glossy proof, you could have an iris made, or a fujiproof, and the list goes on...PPI=Pixels per inch (in your file). DPI=Dots per inch (how many dots can be printed in a square inch...the higher the dpi, the finer the dot, the finer the dot, the better the detail). Does that make sense? As far as how Photoshop Image size and it being 150 ppi or 300ppi and so on...well...I don't have a straight up explaination...If you are outputting the file in a way that requires negatives be produced, find out the lines screen of the film...Multiply your line screen by 2 and that will be a safe image size ppi. If you're printing to a color inkjet,laserjet, etc...200 ppi should be plenty ample...I speak that only from my personal experience...
Edit>Yeah I was under the impression that you would change your size w/o resampling the image...If you enlarge an image past the original pixel content, you're just enlarging the pixels.

[This message has been edited by Jeni (edited 10-25-2001).]

I think your basic problem here is not what type of printer you are sending your file to, but the quality problem that will result from the files original resolution. As mobrul pointed out a file of 1600x1200 will look fine at 4"x5" but if you intend on enlarging it more, the printers resolution won't really matter, your enlarged print will just have larger pixels (and therefore stairstepping).
The best advice I can give you (as an employee of a service beareau) is to ask your service beareau. The fix (if needed) will depend entirely on the equipment they will be printing on.

Me Again?

The thing I've learned about any raster project is to start as large as your possibly going to want to print it and then work down from there. Even with all my wallpapers that were only destined for screen res I've started at double size at 360dpi. I did a set of wallpapers last year that I recently layed out and did a nice print of at 8x6in each (6 walls side by side at 1440dpi epson glossy on an epson9kpro).

So if you're gonna do a 1600 wall start 3200x2400 at a decent res 360 or 720 and you'll come out with a wall that'll work for screen or print.


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