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How large does a render have to be for large scale printing?


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I recently printed a 48" x 24" image for a client at 150ppi. The size of the image was 7200x3600. The quality was beautiful, no problems. He's now requested it to be blown up even larger. He wants a 16 foot by 8 foot image (4.8m x 2.4m).

 

I don't think re-rendering at 28800x14400 is the best way of doing this. What sizes and what ppi can I get away with while still preserving image quality?

 

The image is going to go in a store window, so it has to remain fairly high quality from a few feet away.

 

Michael

temp.jpg

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This has been discussed quite a bit on these forums. Almost beaten to death really. Try a quick forum search. The thing to consider is that the viewing distance on a billboard will be much greater than someone standing 2 feet from a printed board. If you climb up to one of those highway signs, you would see that its very low dpi. I think I have heard 18-30 dpi for billboards, so your render at 7200 should be fine.

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It is all down to viewing distance. My 27" 1440p screen is only 114ppi, but viewing it @ 24" (60cm) or more looks immaculate.

 

The natural viewing distance to fit the whole frame in our field of view is roughly the diagonal of the image.

That would be nearly 18’ (17’-10" 5.43m) or for your 16’ x 8’.

 

At this range, I think your current resolution will do ok...if they are to see it really close, I would perhaps double it...but don't try to get insanely precise.

 

I don’t know what kind of bleeding the 8’ wide capable printer will have also, how smooth the material will be etc…having a 150ppi source file for an output that cannot exceed – say – 100 true dpi, is a waste.

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