Testing printer and sizes

[kat]

Getting out of town this weekend and I have a chance to talk to one of the photos stores (lab) that I may use in the future. They are really expensive so I want to make sure they are good.

So my images usually come out 8x12 at 300dpi. So I wanted to test how large I could go before it's a total flop. First off...any knowledge on how far?

We called a couple labs and most said 16x20...? In either case, was going to get the 8x12 and up done up to see. Now I'm thinking should I bother..lol.

Should I use a photo that has lots of detail? Color?

Any input would be great here. I've never done anything higher than 4x6 since that is all they have here in town...sad I know. :cry-an:

[jellotranz]

Well, As far as how large you can go really depends on alot of things. Remeber that many times the larger the print the lower the required DPI/PPI for printing. Bill Boards are amazingly low resolution for thier size. We have in our office 20X30 prints shot off a 2 Megapixel Kodak Professional DCS520. Are they perfect, no not really, but for how they are viewed they are fine. So if your native size is 8X12X300DPI then you should be able to go faily large. You also want to check with the lab, some labs will size your image up for larger printing, others really prefer you give them one that is sized correctly (Although in my experience, the labs generally want to upsize the image for you)

As far as what to send them, Yes lots of color and detail as these are the things that are going to suffer the most when upsizing your images.

Hope this helps!!

JT

[jellotranz]

Oh one other thing. If you are going to have them do a test print for you at 8X12 I would tell them that you want them to size the image up large and then crop it down to the 8X12, this will give you a better idea of what the larger print is going to look like. Just having them print an 8X12 for you won't really tell you much about the quality if you end up making a 30X40 print. Or size it up yourself (Genuine Fractals is what I use)

[kat]

What I was going to do was send them one photo but in all the sizes from 8x12 and up and see how they look. Or maybe I should give them a call and see if they prefer to do it..

[jellotranz]

I would call them, explain to them what exactly you are trying to do. Most labs are used to this, and will be happy to help you out.

[tirediron]

In answer to your question about detail and colour. Very definitely. In fact, what you may want to do (and what I would recommend) is creating a specific test image. That is, one which has the full gamut of colour and lots of detail. I find something like a steel bridge works well, and if you add a colour-test strip to the image, you'll be able to see what both print quality and colour reproduction from this lab are like.