Really big prints and upsampling

Every week we’re printing at the gallery.  I do a lot of medium sized photo reproductions for clients, canvases, water color papers, and more.  Keeps me busy, and it keeps me changing spools of media.  I need to get a few more spools on hand now…..

Yesterday I did a 36″ x 54″ print.  The image quality and resolution looked great.  And the original image wasn’t that size, it was much smaller.

I’ve been asked by clients and friends how to up sample their images and keep quality in place.  Several methods are employed at our gallery, and I tried a new one out yesterday that’s probably available to many readers.

Normally I use a special program for upsampling and I’m very satisfied with it.  PhotoZoomPro2.  Great program, fast, and it gets the job done.  But I decided to use Photoshop and a tip that Scott Kelby included in his “Photoshop CS4 for Digital Photographers” yesterday and see what I thought.

My original image was an HDR which was 8.633″ x 13.013″.  I popped into the Photoshop Image menu and selected Image Size. You can see the actual menu and what I changed.

First I changed the document size and put the new resized number in.  36 x 54.264.  I cropped afterward.  I then changed the resolution upward according to what I learned in Kelby’s book (from 300 to 360 dpi).  Finally I selected Bicubic Sharper….there’s the interesting one.  It says it’s best for reduction, not enlargement.

This is one of the many cool tips in Scott Kelby’s books.  When I tried this little upsample trick it worked, and worked well.  The final result was pretty close to my more expensive upsampling program.

So, if you’re looking to resize your photos and you own Photoshop give this little trick a whirl.  If you’re trying to figure out why it works so well I’ve got nothing for ya!  Kelby picked up the trick from a friend as well, so I guess you’ll be doing a little web searching to find out why this works.  And if you do find out, drop me a comment, I’d love to hear.

My final print was made from the Photoshop version resized, and it looks great!