Blowing Up Photo to Wall Size

[norcaldiver]

4x6 is going to cost you if you want someone to print it out. I have a color plotter (I work for an architectural firm) that I used to print out a 3ft x 3 ft of my son...36 inches wide is the largest. Kinkos can print that size out for you, but if you want bigger maybe you should take it to a photo shop. That way you aren't limited by the dpi of a large scale printer and will actually get a "photo"
Now, my pic was from a 4 MP camera and just blown up. I didn't resize the image, because it's a poster, not for viewing from 6 inchas away, plus it's a warhol copy so it needed to look a little grainy.
As far as billboards go, get up on the scaffold and look at it, you'll see they are pixilated like mad, but from 50 ft away, they look nice and sharp.

 

[TedJ]

I believe I've read about a process, or a plug-in or something that will facilitate blowing up digital images to rediculous sizes.

Back to the original question, I believe you were thinking about the Genuine Fractals program. I haven't used it and I think it's very expensive, but I could be wrong.
TedJ

 

[CBulla]

a little tip I learned about blowing up photos is to first increast the DPI then enlarge The higher your dpi the lower the amount of distortion as you get bigger.

 

[Mo2vation]

Thanks all. Here's the latest:

Buddy has a pic of a Fiji sunset... nice pic (4 meg camera - very colorful). Wanted to give it to his GF for christmas.

a) Ran it through Neat Image to lose the noise

b) Ran through photoshop to blow up to 600 DPI

c) output was like, 600 meg... yes, you read that right. An eye-popping 600 meg.

d) took to Kinkos - killer output. $217 for a 66" X 34"

My buddy is very happy with the results.

K

 

[Scubatooth]

intresting, thats not a work flow im used to but if it works and he likes it more power to him.

how does the image look up close (6" or less away?)

also happen to have a copy of it so i can take a look at it ?

 

[Mo2vation]

intresting, thats not a work flow im used to but if it works and he likes it more power to him.

how does the image look up close (6" or less away?)

also happen to have a copy of it so i can take a look at it ?

600 meg. I'll just send it right over to ya...

K

 

[friscuba]

Someone mentioned earlier the poster printing option available on printers. I hadn't heard of it before so i tried it just for fun.

I used a low resolution version of the turtle pic I took yesterday and printed it up in fastdraft (lowest print quality) mode on regular paper just to see how it would turn out.

Each sheet of paper looks horrible when viewed by itself from close up. Taped together and viewed from beyond 4 feet it actually looks pretty decent, especially considering I was going for the lowest possible image quality.

It's not wall sized, but it sure makes a quick and easy poster for a couple bucks and a few minutes worth of time. I ended up with a 36X28 image. I would recommend doing a trial run in fastdraft (or lowest quality mode) in greyscale because it cut off a portion of the picture - need to do some resizing if I want the whole thing printed up.

I wouldn't heasitate to do this again if I wanted a poster, unless I'm looking for something in "show" quality.

Here's a pic of it on the wall. Perfectly acceptable results when viewed from at least 4 feet away. We'll see how long it takes my wife to notice it when she comes home.

Aloha,

Steve

 

[Dee]

Steve...I'm thinking the same thing. I've been wanting to make a quilted bomber-type jacket and this would work great for that. I'll be a walking billboard! ;D

 

[grafphoto]

I have read a lot of good things about jumbogiant.com. You send them your digicam file and they up-rez it from there. No need to deal with the huge file sizes, which is a bonus.

 

[GoBlue!]

Wow, an impressive thread I just read through.

I've been nervous about going with a digital camera, as my wife would like select pics to be enlarged to 11x14" for around the house. I'm gathering here that my fears are unfounded. How do 5mp cameras do with enlargements to that size (doubt I'd go bigger)?

Jim