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Hello Adobe Community,
I am creating large-scale print vinyl murals for a museum. My client has started providing me with images from their museum archives that they want to be enlarged.
For example, Museum wants the image below to become 46" x 37" - if opened, you can see that the image is only 9.9" x 7.9" with a 1600 DPI.
Here is my issue: Do I resample or resize.
If I resample the image at the same DPI it blows up and is messy.
If I resample the image at a lower DPI the image shrinks???? It is still fuzzy but useable.
If I resize the image: with the current DPI
Obviously the DPI will adjust to the new dimensions etc etc. I have no really preserved the pixel when resizing?
NOTE: these are anyways old photgraph images so I am not looking for sharpness as much as print quality.
1) How do I go about making the proper resizing- should I resample and preserve detail whilst changing the DPI? I understand nobody is going to look at 100%; they will be standing back at a distance.
2) Do I resample at a lower DPI, and if so, WHY does the whole image seem to shrink? I am nervous that this will change the actual print size. Even when I check the px count to inches, count it seems to be the same. This is not true for when I resample and use the original 1600DPI.
I notice that the image is obviously better resampled with a lower dpi, because even though I am upscaling the size, I am descaling the extra pixels. I will need to make a small crop, but nothing that will drastically change the PPI of the image. So that will not affect the image for this question.
I hope this makes sense!
Please let me know if I am processing this right and that I am properly SIZING this photograph for a large Vinyl Wall Mural Print.
Alice
#photoshop
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At 16000 x 13000 pixels those images have plenty resolution for large size printing.
Just leave them as they are, no need to resample.
If you use the correct term, pixels per inch, ppi - not "dpi" - it becomes much easier to understand. Pixels per inch means exactly what it says. It's just a formula to decide how much to spread the image pixels out, and thus how big the print. Ppi is not an inherent property of the file. It's just metadata; an instruction.
16000 pixels/46 inches = 347 ppi. More than enough, overkill even.
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Thank you for your reply; with that said, when is it best to resample for print use?
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Thank you for your reply; with that said, when is it best to resample for print use?
By @Alice2346576
When it can't be avoided.
If you always resize without resampling, you know what the print size is and how many PPI there is at this natural/native pixel size.
From here, you can make an informed decision based on the image content, print variables and viewing distance/conditions.
The decision may be to do nothing, which is often the case if the PPI value is lower than the ideal. Resampling to a higher PPI rarely results in a better result (depends on image content).
If there are far too many pixels and resulting processing is a concern, then one may resample down for a smaller PPI value, Sharpening is generally appropriate after down sampling