Print quality

[TheBadger]

Hello,

I was wondering what are the optimal settings for best print quality. I just finished my first real render and took it in to photoshop to work on, but soon found that no matter what terragen2 settings I used, the final tiff is always 72dpi. This seems to be the case for both full renders and preview renders. 72dpi is useless to me!

As you may know, the less you have to "mess" with an image in photoshop the better. So I would like to know how to render a still in Terragen2 that is 300dpi so that I have something I can work with for fine Art Printing.

I sometimes make black and white negatives from my photoshop work to print in a darkroom, Because I like the paper I can use for printing. And, as you can imagine, by the time I get from photoshop to a dark room I have already done a lot to the original image. Resizing a 72 dpi to 300 makes the whole project pointless from the start, because the final image will never look like a photo, at least not one taken on a proper camera.

I havent made a terragen2 image thats good enough to bring in to my print work yet, but if I cant figure out the workflow there is no point anyway ... Please help me understand how to make my tiff files useable right out of Terragen2

Thank you.

[Kadri]

TheBadger , you have a standard confusion like most of the ones who come from a print background !

There are not a problem at all about this in short!

Changing the 72 dpi in Photoshop to 300 dpi (but leaving the others) is not resizing (altering the image) !
You are only changing the relative size of the picture . You do not alter the image at all by changing only this setting.

But when you change the pixel amount then you do alter it.
From 1200 x 800  to 1600 x 1200  is a real change. But a image that is 1600 x 1200   can 72 dpi  and 300 or whatever.
You only change the relative size where it is ; in print or TV or wherever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dots_per_inch   you can begin here , but there are many links about this .

Cheers  

[sjefen]

Well.... you cant just say you want it to be 300dpi. You also need to now the size of which the image should be printed out on.

I work with cm, so if I want an image printed out on a size of 100cm x 80cm and also want it to have 300dpi I must do this:

100cm x 300dpi / 2,54 = 11811px
80cm x 300dpi / 2,54 =    9448px

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Terje

[PorcupineFloyd]

Also don't forget that required DPI lowers while the print size increases. You certainly don't need 300 DPI for A1 print since you won't read the image from 10 cm but from 1 m (so you don't need that much detail as on ie. A4 print). I usually do my renders in 3600x2400 px and since they are by definition ultra-sharp (compared to photos) - they look very well on prints (although I very rarely go above 20x30 cm).

[TheBadger]

So... What you are telling me is...

if I want to have a photoshop file that would print at...Say... 16x24 inches, with a 300 dpi, then I should make my terragen render at what?

Say I create a blank photoshop document at 16x24 inches, and import a fresh- from terragen .tiff, at whatever settings, what I am seeing is that when I import the .tiff it is tiny and must be scaled to fit.

It must be scaled up, and this is bad. So please tell me if anyone can, what should I render at, and then how should I Bring it to photoshop.

You can not scale a 72dpi to 300 without problems, and pixels and inches or cm or whatever, do not change independently. Print standards are 300dpi minimum.

Please help again.

Thank you

[domdib]

300 dots per inch at 16 x 24 = 4800 (16x300) x 7200 (24x300) Simple!

Incidentally, 300 dpi is a standard for magazines, which aren't usually 16 x 24. As others have pointed out, because a bigger image is usually viewed from further away, a lower dpi usually suffices.

[PorcupineFloyd]

16x24 inches is approximately an A2 format which is quite big. If you want to hang it on the wall then you don't need a file which exceeds 150 DPI. If you want to look at it from 10 cm - go for 300 or even 600 DPI, but generally it is useless and not needed for regular printwork.

Terragen exports files which are set to 72 DPI but DPI is not linked to image resolution described in megapixels (or x by y number of pixels). DPI is relative to print dimensions and you can change an image DPI in Photoshop without resampling (uncheck "resample" box in Photoshop) - this way you'll check an image desired DPI but you won't scale it at all.

If we're into Photoshop. If you untick "resample image" and both dimensions and DPI are linked - you can type in your desired print dimensions and PS will automatically calculate opened image DPI. If it's no less than 150 - I wouldn't bother for 16x24 inch print.

EDIT:
You might also want to check out this link - http://www.rideau-info.com/photos/mythdpi.html

So... What you are telling me is...

if I want to have a photoshop file that would print at...Say... 16x24 inches, with a 300 dpi, then I should make my terragen render at what?

Say I create a blank photoshop document at 16x24 inches, and import a fresh- from terragen .tiff, at whatever settings, what I am seeing is that when I import the .tiff it is tiny and must be scaled to fit.

It must be scaled up, and this is bad. So please tell me if anyone can, what should I render at, and then how should I Bring it to photoshop.

You can not scale a 72dpi to 300 without problems, and pixels and inches or cm or whatever, do not change independently. Print standards are 300dpi minimum.

Please help again.

Thank you

[Kadri]

...
You might also want to check out this link - http://www.rideau-info.com/photos/mythdpi.html
...

Good explanation there , PorcupineFloyd !

[TheBadger]

Thank You everyone for help, and to PorcupineFloyd for the links and instructions.

I was blind but now I see... a little.

Badger