Image resizing in photoshop and resolution before printing

[Gerar]

Hi Dana/Jone,

I’m still learning the “art” of making a good print, but its taking tremendous amount of time and test. I have a Leica Monocrhome, and this system is the best for my working procedure, no one can beat piezography system!

I print a picture with nice and smooth tonality gradation, and I print in to a Letter size, but I was not able to see some of the gradation. I tough there was some problem in the printer, but when I print it to a bigger size (this time A3 plus), the shadows that I saw int he screen where there.

So my first question was the image size and if the resizing, could be the reason of this issue.
In photo shop, when you choose Image size, before you print, as I don’t think is a good idea to “resize” in the QTR tool, you need to choose the resolution and also the resizing option: Bicubic sharper; Bicubic smoother; Bicubic; Bilinear and Nearest neighbor.

At the end when you resize images in Photoshop, you are adding or deleting pixels to your image right?

Also what is the resolution (dpi and ppi) that you should work in piezography when you export?

Definitely, I need a nice course in your Labs!

Thanks and best regards
Gerar

[Brian_S]

There was a recent discussion around some of these issues: http://www.inkjetmall.com/tech/showthread.php?1833-1000dpi
This may not answer all your questions, but it’s probably worth reading all the same.

[Gerar]

Hi Brian,

Thanks so much for answering, I will read it carefully and lets see if some one can help me.

Regards
Gerar

[jon]

I think that the Monochrom makes images that are best enlarged more so than letter size. It has a peculiar acuity that is lost in small sizes. I rented this camera to make new samples and noticed this about it. Whereas my higher Megapixel A7R prints with great acuity at small size - the Monochrom needs to breathe.

Do not resize in Photoshop by resampling. Never add or subtract pixels with Piezography. That is the rule. With the Monochrom you may wish to experiment with down sampling on small sizes. Let us know if that improves better your ability to resolve the detail. I find it better to crop the Monochrom for our small samples and have done so on a new portrait sample we are producing. I can make out every thread in the shirt, whisker on the face with the crop. However, if I print the full size at 13x19 it begins to have room to express its peculiar level of detail. On the new landscape samples I made using an A7R and a Canon glass - the full 8000 pixels does fine. Can not explain why the Monochrom is so tight.

You should normally allow the QTR to receive the full resolution file. In the case of the Monochrom at small size try to resample to fewer pixels and see if you pick up the “perception” of greater detail than when you print it at full resolution and let us know.

[Brian_S]

@jon;7846

Do not resize in Photoshop by resampling. Never add or subtract pixels with Piezography. … You should normally allow the QTR to receive the full resolution file.

In that 1000 dpi thread, we discussed this post by Roy Harrington, which states that if you don’t send a 720dpi image to QTR then it’s going to be resampled to 720dpi anyway - in Windows QTR does it and in MacOS the printing pipeline does it. In the absence of any contrary evidence, then since Roy wrote the program I assume that’s correct. Given this, I still don’t understand your advice not to resample. Sending an image to QTR in anything other than 720 dpi will mean that it’s going to happen anyway. The only way that I can see to avoid it is to set your DPI to 720 without resampling and print the image at whatever physical size this produces, or crop the image to the paper size, as you suggest.

[walkerblackwell]

Sharpening is really really what the individual artist wants. From my research and conversations, I think the agreed upon goal is that it should not be evidently over-sharpened as noticed by a general viewer passing by a print. There really is no opposite to that though. One can soften a print to oblivion and it simply becomes an artist choice. Sharpening (over-sharpening) is an algorithmic interference pattern placed between the viewer and the image and it’s perception can get distracting. I happen to like a decent amount of it (but done subtly!). The Preserve Details algorithm is a sharpen-by-upsample that seems to actually work better than anything I’ve done before. It can always be then down-sampled using a bicubic sharper. Newer versions of PS are changing things my friends. For me, sometimes the dumbest approach works the best.

Everyone has different wants. It’s like choosing a lens. I like really sharp lenses and 8x10 film, but that totally doesn’t do it for everyone. I shouldn’t be telling anyone else what lens to buy just because I might think my choices are important.