Trying to print a poster of a collage of kid's golf photos for a banquet and can't get a quality print. Using a FOJr and printing on Oracal 3951, using 3951 profile, rendering intent to perceptual, heaters at 50 and 40. 720 print res too grainy. Read on forum to try exporting to tiff and got good quality at 1440x1440 but now I get a "four band strip" of lighter print about every 1/4" inch. Not quite as noticable in the sold color border but very noticeable on subjects' faces. Other than this band or strip, and the photos printing a little darker than the originals, the remaining print is pretty good. Used Flexi to make poster and rip/print. Two questions: ideas what's causing/how to remedy the lighter bands, and second, what's the best way to lighten the print? Any input would be greatly appreciated!
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Falcon Jr photo printing problems
- Thread starter raider
- Start date
bob
It's better to have two hands than one glove.
If 720 dpi is 'too grainy' then there's something wrong with your file. The human eye in most non-mutants is incapable of discerning one part in 120 or so.
An image resolution higher than 150 ppi is a waste of time and can be counter productive, depending.
Assuming that the original images are somewhat smaller than your trying to print, how did you enlarge them? There are ways that work and ways that don't.
Your rendering intent of 'Perceptual' is correct and the heaters probably aren't a player in this drama. What is the format of your input and what is the resolution of the bitmaps I assume are the pictures giving you problems? Ideally you want a 150 ppi image printing at 720 dpi. Something resembling a 4:1 or more ratio between printer and input resolution is what you want.
An image resolution higher than 150 ppi is a waste of time and can be counter productive, depending.
Assuming that the original images are somewhat smaller than your trying to print, how did you enlarge them? There are ways that work and ways that don't.
Your rendering intent of 'Perceptual' is correct and the heaters probably aren't a player in this drama. What is the format of your input and what is the resolution of the bitmaps I assume are the pictures giving you problems? Ideally you want a 150 ppi image printing at 720 dpi. Something resembling a 4:1 or more ratio between printer and input resolution is what you want.
Ok, here's the info on one of the photos. Original the photo was 3504 x 2336 and 2.74MB. When I copy/paste that photo into Flexi, the Design Central bitmap tab shows 3504x2336 and 23MB. Also shows 72x72 PPI Embedded, and then below that there is a window to adjust the PPI with 72x72 apparently the default. This window displays only 2 digits but as I increase the number, it goes to 99 and then 0 and continues increasing as the photo shrinks in size. As I copied the photos to Flexi, should I have increased the PPI to 150 or higher and then cropped them to fit in the collage to maintain a high resolution? If so, is it possible to recover the resolution after cropping/saving?
Also curious why the photo was originally 2.74MB and then grew to 23MB when pasted into Flexi. The original photo file type is PhotoSuite.Image - Just a compressed file type for convenience?
Also curious why the photo was originally 2.74MB and then grew to 23MB when pasted into Flexi. The original photo file type is PhotoSuite.Image - Just a compressed file type for convenience?
bob
It's better to have two hands than one glove.
3504x2336 at 72ppi is about 48"x32". How did it get to be that size? What was it's original size and resolution? Did someone just grab a corner and pull or did they use a proper tool like PhotoZoom Pro or whatever to increase the size?
I have no idea what a 'PhotoSuite.Image' might be. But it sounds very much like something produced by someone's wife or cousin or perhaps mailman and is probably a pixelated mess. If you want to blow up a bitmap to ~48x32 you need the original bitmap and proper tools. Note that Flexi is not even close to a proper tool for this sort of endeavor.
Original photo was 48"x32" and was taken by a parent with a Canon EOS. PhotoSuite may have been the software used to burn to a CD. Not sure what the original resolution was. When pasted into Flexi, I needed the photo to be about 6"x6" so after pasting, I just grabbed a corner and shrunk it. Is my process totally flawed or am I just missing a step?
bob
It's better to have two hands than one glove.
I'd go for totally flawed.
Of course, by grabbing a corner in Flexi and shrinking it down you increased the resolution by a factor of 8. Thus the image you ended up with was approximately 576 ppi, way too much for proper printing.
In order to make a 48x32 image 6x6, actually 6x4 would be the proper aspect ratio, at the same resolution you have to discard around 98.5% of all of the information in the image. This means that you'll end up keeping about 2 pixels of of each hundred, actually 123,552 out of 7,962,624. So which 7,839,072 pixels do you throw away?
What you need to is a process called 'Resample'. You can do this in Flexi but it's clumsy compared to other packages. What you do is import the picture full size and then select it. Then do Bitmap->Resample... Check 'Proportional' and enter the number shown in the width divided by 8 in your case and press the Tab key. The height will be proportionally adjusted and the image resampled. Unfortunately Flexi will leave it at 48x32 at about 9 dpi. So now either grab a corner and bring it down to 6x4 or just specify "proportional" and 6" wide in the Design Central dialog. Now your image is properly downsized.
"Resample", one of the options you always wonder: "What the heck it that for?". Thanks for the reply - really helps make sense of the problem. Never thought about a resolution being too high. You mentioned Flexi's resample feature was weak. Is there software that you (or others) prefer? I have a watered down version of photshop and guess I need to invest in the real program, or at least one that focuses on photo-type work. THANKS AGAIN!
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