Quality of Large Prints- Wall Graphics

[Cody Cruea]

Hey!
Veteran sign guy here, dad owns a shop in Vegas that we've operated for 40 years, and had a quick question about quality of a wall graphic image.
We print on two Color Painter M64s, we've done tons of wall graphics now for many of the casinos, resorts, hotels, event centers, stadiums, etc.

I finally had my first complaint on quality of an image.
The customer wasn't happy with the fact that at an arms length away, the sharpness of the image wasn't perfect.

I've downloaded directly from a stock site, (shutterstock, istock, adobe stock, getty's).
I've always been under the impression that the images are always gonna be just alittle blurry, due to rastersizing and pixel enlargening for large scale.
And what I had to explain to the client is that it won't ever be crisp at large scale- no matter who you have printing.
And I am a master subcontractor for national sign companies here with a great reputation.
I work in every program possible- Corel, Adobe photoshop, illustrator, Gerber Composer to name a few in design, and the onyx rip centers for printers, SAi for routers etc.
And when I save my files to-and-from I normally use file sharing sites like dropbox, wetransfer or client specific sharing, and when I have the file locally (designing myself) i make sure to save at 5-7gb files that I scale down jsut enough so my printers don't crash and I have TBs of NAS to save and open locally between computers.


THE QUESTION:
Is that normal?
I know my file handling is the best I can do as I've built all my rigs- very versatile with equipment.
I just want to know if that's normal- the quality of lets say a cityscape or a locker room to be slightly out of focus, or slightly blurry when 5 inches away from the print.

Any advice? IS my customer being waaaaaaay too picky?

Thanks in advance.

 

[Humble PM]

Old rule used to be an A3 artwork for a 48 sheet poster (across the street at 30mph). Now we've got giant on (rail) platform posters athat require way more resolution. Your Shutterstock etc may be good enough at sensible viewing distance, but now you're able to provide your client with larger, close range output.
Try upsizing in Gigapixel, or, find a 100mpx stock supplier. There is a reason why (apart from selling toys to photographers) Phase One, and Hasselblad make monster capture cameras. Because there is the print media available to reproduce it, and you sell it.

 

[victor bogdanov]

Run it thought Topaz Gigapizel AI and it will be sharp, most of the Shutterstock photos/ rasters aren't good enough to print mural size but gigapixel fixes that

 

[Cody Cruea]

Old rule used to be an A3 artwork for a 48 sheet poster (across the street at 30mph). Now we've got giant on (rail) platform posters athat require way more resolution. Your Shutterstock etc may be good enough at sensible viewing distance, but now you're able to provide your client with larger, close range output.
Try upsizing in Gigapixel, or, find a 100mpx stock supplier. There is a reason why (apart from selling toys to photographers) Phase One, and Hasselblad make monster capture cameras. Because there is the print media available to reproduce it, and you sell it.

I use PhotoZoom Pro 7 (Corel add on) to upsize/upscale an image if I have to. Turns those pixels into a gaussian blur to make the photo look cleaner and not pixelated when sizing. However this image from shutter stock didn't even need the upscaling. When upscaling via that method, I do loose some clarity or sharpness, but thats truly if the photo is small and being blown up to lifesize, I usualy jsut use my best judgement.

 

[Cody Cruea]

Run it thought Topaz Gigapizel AI and it will be sharp, most of the Shutterstock photos/ rasters aren't good enough to print mural size but gigapixel fixes that

I'll check it out thank you

 

[Medina Signs]

If you run it through Topaz Gigapixel - let us know how it worked out.

 

[ColorCrest]

Any advice? IS my customer being waaaaaaay too picky?

Cody,

I suggest you try to learn if this display is still at the airport in Las Vegas. It serves as a gauge. Take some pictures, maybe take a measuring tape. Study. Then ask your customer to find an example themselves so you can compare your new knowledge to their expectations, if they ever find their own example. Good luck.

This display is from the international terminal from 2012.

 

[JBurton]

Hey!
Veteran sign guy here, dad owns a shop in Vegas that we've operated for 40 years, and had a quick question about quality of a wall graphic image.
We print on two Color Painter M64s, we've done tons of wall graphics now for many of the casinos, resorts, hotels, event centers, stadiums, etc.

I finally had my first complaint on quality of an image.

Doesn't sound like you have much to worry about. I'm going to guess this guy really got under your skin? I remember the first time I went to Vegas, I thought all the signs would be just top notch perfection... I was sorely mistaken. I'd advise the customer that you'll need them to supply superior artwork if they don't think this is up to par with what they expect.

 

[Precision]

I often wonder the order of the process in taking a .rar or .nef photo from the raw photo to large format print.

I has the same issue with a client recently and could use thus education.

Printing in vectors, not a problem. Full size raster/pictures always seems to be a problem.

Anyone who cares to share best practices on this, it would be very helpful and greatly appreciated.

Thanks