Looking for advice on printing and framing R3D's

[Marcus Friedlander]

Hello everyone,

I would like to print and frame some stills pulled from motion (5568x3312 DRAGON footage that's graded in Resolve) as a gift, but this side of the world is totally outside my realm of expertise. So, needless to say, I have some questions.

What size of a print can I get out of a file of this resolution? It's for hanging up in a house so, I'd like it to be as large as possible, while still retaining fine details.

Does anyone have any recommendations for LA based companies that can offer this service? What type of file will they want from me?

How do I know that it will print the way it looks on my monitor setup? Or how can I set up Reslove color management to make it work?

Is there a certain type of printing style, paper style, ink style that I should be looking for?


Thanks in advance for any help!

 

[Daniel Schweinert]

The resolution is sufficient for posters. Usually you will have to save your files as JPEG with an embedded sRGB profile. The bigger the poster less "dpi/ppi" is needed. In example I made some prints for my office 90cm x 60cm at 150dpi and they look fantastic.

Take a look at these links to see whats possible:
http://photos.walmart.com/walmart/helpphotoresolution
http://www.urban75.org/photos/print.html

 

[Marcus Friedlander]

Thanks for your response! Those links were very helpful!

Do you know what the max size/dpi that I could print at?

 

[Daniel Schweinert]

That depends mainly on what paper you want them to print. On glossy premium paper I wouldn't go below 150dpi (thats 90x54cm). But if you use canvas (rougher material) you might get away with 100dpi (140x80cm) and slightly bigger size. Ask copy shops near you. Myself I order these things online (here in europe) and they have a tool that shows you how good your print will be at that specific resolution (from dark green, green, yellow, orange, red).

 

[Ulf Krentz]

Marcus, this totally depends on your motif. Usually a closeup, or maybe an emotional blurred image or so will work fine in every size, you can even add some grain after upscaling to get an impression of sharpness. Whenever your image has plenty of details and requires true resolution you´ll be limited in printing size. Of course this also depends on your viewing distance, just take a close look at a billboard. Avoid jpg format, better use a tif file instead.

Cheers

Ulf

 

[Bill Sepaniak]

I did an international photo exhibition of my work in Italy. See: visionsfromlamorra.com. About half the images in the show were frame grabs from motion sequences shot by me on my Scarlet. They were saved out from RCX as .tiffs. I did the printing myself on a Canon iPF 8300 printer at 24" x 36" using LexJet photo-metallic paper. A discussion about the technical / file requirements for fine art printing can be found at my fine art printing web-site: bayshorefineartimaging.com

As a side note, I have also printed a frame grab for Jared that he shot on his Epic. It was also a 24" x 36" but printed on canvas and gallery wrapped. It came out quite nice.

 

[M.Halsell]

Consistent with the earlier posts, most commercial inkjet devices print at 240-300ppi resolutions. Native printable image size can easily be determined by opening the image in Photoshop ->Image->Image Size. The document size will display in width and height and resolution at the the bottom. The default resolution will be a video rez of about 72 pixels/inch.

Given that the print device will need to dial in at 240pp or higher, click off resample image and punch in the device print resolution to give you the correct 1:1 print ratio (width x height x resolution).

So based on the numbers you provided, you could print at 23in x 14in without any penalty in upscaling or downscaling.

Again as mentioned viewing distance will factor in you try to upscale to significant degree. And a glossy substrate will provide the best reproduction because the ink dot doesn't spread or bleed over to the neighboring ink droplet. Just communicate to the printer that the source is originating from a video still and address the concerns of print size and color fidelity. Generally, embedded color profiles are ignored in favor a print based profile of the raster engine. Again, if the color is critical, I would request the printer provide a contact sheet or color proof before committing to printing a huge poster or multiple prints. Also ask about oxidation stability (premature yellowing) in the stock thats being used.