How to Make Big Prints in Photoshop
Today, we’re going to show you how to make some big prints and when I talk about big prints we usually talk about 16x20s and larger from regular work flow or use a crop tool for making it by 10’s, 5x7 or even 11 x 14’s but for making larger prints let’s say from relatively smaller files there are a few techniques that you can learn. I’m going to show you them right now. We’re going to go to image size and this is the raw file, the need of pixels right off the camera and it comes of at 14.293 times 9.493 at 300 pixels per inch.
Now, here’s a way to upsize without even recreating new pixels, without cheating for lack of a better way of saying that and that is by reducing the resolution. Now, you want to be able to reduce your resolution according to your final output. Most labs will ask for 250. Some allows for 300. My lab asks for 250. I give them 200. I’ve done tests there I think as a safeguard asking for 250 when really they only need 200.
So the first thing I’m going to do then is go to my resolution and knock it down to 200. Now, I’m going to click off resample and look what I’ve done, I’ve immediately upsized my image to 21 inches, 21.44 and it’s the exact same pixels that I’m working with now.
Again my lab is using a very good printer. It’s a Lambda printer. It’s a laser printer. It’s very, very sharp and renders detail with extreme accuracy so they say they want to 250 but I give them 200, it works. Nobody complains and I get larger prints without worrying too much. Now, if you’re working with a printer you know an Inkjet printer of sorts, you can even go as low as and I’ve tried this as low as 125 but let’s say 150 for the sake of argument so right away we’ve got a 28 inch print.
If we knock the resolution down to 150, you see where the width went up to 28 but for the sake of argument let’s assume we’re going to be going to the lab. So I’m going to click okay and I’m go to 21 inch print and I have not changed the pixels at all. So here’s what I’ve got, there is the image size.
Now, let’s say I wanted to get it up to a 40 inch. There’s a way of doing that without literally any degradation whatsoever of the image and you do that by doing this. Go to image size and we’re going to go percent, 110%. So, we got to click on resample by the way. We’re going to keep that at 200, 110% so we’re going incrementally in degrees of 10%. So I’m going to click okay and what I’ve done there is I’ll increase the 10% from image size 21.44 to 23.585. So I’ve increased that about an inch or so an inch and a half and two inches.
I keep doing that in percentages. I keep doing that until I get it up to the size that I want. Now, an easier way of course is create an action and I’m going to that right now. I’m going to create an action. New action, I’m going to call it upsize 10%. I’m going to hit record and I’m just going to basically run steps I’d just showed you. Image size, percent 110%, make sure resample is click on.
Resample means it’s creating new pixels and essentially it’s cheating but we’ve tried this technique and I’ve boned up prints as large as 50 inches and there’s very, very little if any noticeable degradation. So there’s my action and I’m going to click stop and I’ve got to rate down and I’m going to button mode right here and I’m going to go find that action I just created. There it is right here.
So every time I hit that it’s going to upsize it 10% and I keep doing that until it gets up to the size I want it to be. They get slower as you get bigger because we’re creating a much bigger file with a lot more data and I should at this time mention that you can go to image, image size and jump it right up from the what was it 21 point something. You can go from here. Say for example and jump it right up to say 50 inches. You can try that but there is a noticeable degradation of the image when you do that.
I don’t’ know why it works this way but it’s an amazing technique and you can get absolutely, amazingly sharp images by doing this to any size you want and again it gets some very, very slow because it’s working with a fairly big file size now. It’s probably going to get upwards to over a hundred megabytes if we get this image up to 40, 50 inches. I just want to show you one final step. Let’s just assume that’s the size you’re going to go and let’s just say we’re going to go at 37.9 and let’s assume that’s what we’re happy with.
So we go to print size, filter we’re going to do the sharpening, always do the sharpening after you’ve sized it up. So it’s pretty work flow when you do all the rest of your work flow, save sharpening and adding noise to the very end and make sure you go print size and go to the 100% right here. You notice a 100%, pick an area where you could see the detail and this is our usual sharpening which is kind of crazy way of doing it but it works really, really well and you’ll never read about this in a barker in many college course or anything like that. So put your radius down to point one, highlight it and with your up arrow on your keyboard, bring it up and wait for the image to pop. I think it pops right there. Pop that for.
See it before and after and you know what I’ll try it one more time. I’ll do it even better. So we’ve sharpen it after we’ve sized it up and it just brings that much little bit more of just snappiness to the image and it creates that just much more of a sharpen looking image. Again these are techniques that are just breaking the rules but they work. So we’re going to add noise that’s our last step and again this is part of our regular work flow and if it’s a larger print I might go 1.5 and it’s a little bit too much. Let’s go 1.1 and that’s better, very subtle effect.
That’s how you do it and that’s how you size them up and that’s how you get great big gorgeous print sizes without any degradation of image so try it and see for yourself, it works absolutely amazingly well and hope you enjoy this.