We’ve been wanting to get some art up on the walls at work, and I had the idea of having a staff travel photo contest and getting posters made of the winning photos. It looks like it would be pretty cheap to get posters from Snapfish or a local print shop, but I’ve never personally had any photos enlarged beyond 8x10" and wanted to get some advice.
What should I do to be sure the posters will look good? What sort of resolution requirements should I have for submitted photos?
Snapfish does provide minimum recommended resolutions for their various products, with for example 1080x1620 pixels or more being recommended for a 12x18" poster. But this works out to only 90 ppi, which seems pretty poor quality to me. I save most of my personal photos at 300 ppi (1200x1800 for a standard 4x6"), and I don’t think I’ve ever had anything printed that had a resolution of less than 200 ppi. On the other hand, I’ve heard that poster-sized enlargements don’t need to be very high resolution as they’re normally viewed from a couple of feet away.
I’ve had great results at Kinkos (or whatever they call themselves these days). Just gave the a JPG from my digital camera and had it blown up to 18 x 24. I think my camera is ~ 6 Mp. Just your run-of-the-mill digital camera from about 3 years ago.
It looks like Kinko’s/Fed Ex Office uses Snapfish for their posters, so it’s nice to hear that they do good work. I already have a Snapfish account.
Has anyone ever gotten one of the canvas prints, or metallic paper prints? These seem like they’d be a little classier and more durable than just a poster, although the extra cost may be an issue.
Yeah, they can be pretty costly. I have a 16x20 one from Canvas On Demand and I think it looks great. This is a quick shot I just took of it on my wall. For reference, here is the picture that was printed. It cost me $45 on Groupon but normally it would cost $125.
I’ve also heard really good things about the metallic prints, though I have no personal experience with them.
I recently had some large (20"x30") prints made from small sketches. The prints weren’t expensive ($20 each), but framing or canvas/plaque mounting is (plaque mounts cost over $100 each).
I think with posters you don’t need to highest resolution because people stand back when they look at it. Outdoor advertising is very low res but looks good because it’s far away.
That is a beautiful photo, and it does look really good on canvas. Although it would be expensive I might actually have an easier time getting my boss to support the idea if the result will look really good – he’s pretty sensitive about the appearance of the building and always wants it to look nice.
We can do some mounting in-house, so if price turns out to be a real issue I think we could go with $10-$20 prints and foam core mount them for very little.
Do you remember the resolution of your digital images? I’m curious to know what’s really needed to get a good-looking print that large.
