How big can I print?

At our end, we’re limited by a few factors. At your end there’s also limitations. Let’s explore these a little.

Our limitations:

The printer width. This dictates the largest ‘short side’ we can produce. Our big Epson 20070 is 1620mm or 64inches.

The roll width. This depends on the media you want to print on but generally speaking we have rolls of paper up to the max width of the printer, 1620mm or 64in. Some media, canvas for example we don’t want to print the full width as we need to allow for a wrap. Same deal if you need a border around your work for framing. We can discuss options with you based on your job’s requirements.

Lastly, framing limitations. All framers have their size limits that they can handle. Our framing legend, Chris can handle prints as big as we can produce however, matboard is only readily available in sheets up to around 1000x1500mm. Bigger than that, we need to work smart and frame borderless or include a paper border for framing. Canvas is only limited by roll width and printer width. As our media comes on a roll, we can produce a print essentially any length, again only limited by framing and logistics.

We have made a 1.5 x 4m long panoramic canvas before! We are always open to a challenge but be mindful of consequential costs when installing huge prints. Will you get it in the building? How will you get it upstairs? They don’t bend around corners or up stairwells so you may need to remove windows, doors etc. Will you need a scirror lift, associated permits, access to neighbouring properties etc. All very valid considerations in dealing with large prints. We have an installer that we work with who can help with my of these logistic issues but preparation is key!

Your limitations:

What about my files? Am I limited?

Yes & No, it depends…

If you have upwards of about 6000px on the long edge of your file, chances are we can print virtually any size. Your retouching needs to be spot on and your technique spot on as every little flaw becomes more obvious on a large print. When everything is in check though, it should enlarge just fine, we can help with this!

What about my file? Is it good enough?

It does vary depending on how it was captured or created. We can help figure this out! Consumer drones and phones for the most part are quite small sensors and hit their limits between A2 and A1. High end drones are the exception to the rule here as the cameras are more akin to a professional camera.

Beyond here is where we get technical in our responses… things do vary a lot from one file to the next but this is meant to be a general guide.

When it comes to making files, editing your final print file, in a perfect world everyone would produce TIFF files, Adobe RGB, 16bit and whatever the native DPI is for the printer being used (to size) but this isn’t the perfect world and we will work with what you have. We need lots of pixels to make it work, the other stuff though, we can make it work if you’ve already saved as a JPG or something else and your settings aren’t optimal.

Digging into pixels a bit further, the whole DPI thing is where it becomes complicated. In a business scenario, most labs, busy camera shops etc will implement some kind of lab management software. This is typically optimised for efficiency, not quality. This is where the old JPG 300 dpi being best myth comes from. Anything other than a ‘standard file’ and that automated system loses its s*&t so to speak.
When we do things properly, we have far more bandwidth we can play with.
The current Epson, market leading printers like I use natively print at 360dpi. That’s always going to best technically. However, apply the billboard logic… look up close, more dpi looks better but as you print bigger, you’re no longer looking so close, in fact you really can’t as you have to stand back to appreciate the large print. When viewing from a distance, you simply don’t see the print detail in the same way you do up close, as such, we don’t really need as many dots per inch or so many pixels!

Then we have file size.
Busy labs push you to JPG as they can’t handle silly amounts of data. JPG files are compressed, it keeps the file size down but big files make the best prints, not compressed small ones! I don’t care about big data, as I’m sure you wouldn’t either if you printed your own, as more data means more juicy goodness from which we can make your print.
This means we’re free to feed lossless TIFF files to the printer. PSD also works as we use Photoshop too. Vector PDF’s work well too if you’re an artist printing your graphic creations!

Then we have colour space. This is where things get really really curly.
The media, the printer all have limitations in gamut. Individual colour limitations… It varies a lot!
The hard limitation across the board though is that of the ink set. The Epson 20070 that I use had a gamut similar to Adobe RGB. It’s kinda the nearest neighbour. Adobe RGB is also a very balanced profile. It has almost perfectly even amounts of red, green and blue so it’s very predictable.
Again, throw this at a busy lab and things fall over as they’re generally optimised for sRGB as that’s what majority of home snappers are using.

Doubling back to dpi for a deeper dig into this…
The guru Les Walkling showed me some tests he’d done at differing DPI and found that two resolutions rendered detail at a pixel level accurately.
These are the native DPI of the printer, in my case 360. The other was exactly half (180dpi)
180 in effect spreads the same file over twice the paper area. Twice the length and twice the width.
So let’s say for example your files are 8000x5000px
8000/360 dpi=22.222in long side
Or
8000/180 dpi=44.444in that’s over a metre on the long side!
Sooo that 180dpi became my floor resolution. The base level on which we calculate an image’s maximum optimum size.
Of course we can always upsize and software improves daily. Gigapixel is crazy and now it is built into Photoshop! Keep in mind though, nothing we do with tech and resizing will ever be better than the file’s native size.
Basically, if your files are 5000-6000px plus, you can do pretty much whatever you like providing your images and your process is good. DPI doesn’t matter as much as you’d think, it is more about how many pixels you have!

Now that was some seriously technical stuff and we lost you, that’s ok. We’re here to help! Get in touch and we can guide you through the process.