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Resize a HQ jpeg to a gigantic size - help!

jonnysods

jonnysods

macrumors G3
Original poster
Sep 20, 2006
8,702
7,352
There & Back Again
Hello, I need some advice here, I'm working on a project where I need to make a banner 14ft wide by 8ft high, or 168" x 96".

I downloaded an image from iStock Photo (friggin $85!) - 15.5 x 10.5 @ 300 dpi.

I have PS CS4, and I have done the image resize using the bicubic smoother for enlargement, but the picture is coming out somewhat grainy. I know that there are some tricks out there to compensate for some of this.

Does anyone have any tips for prepping the image for resize, or the resize process? Or any free utilities etc that could help me get the image a little better in quality?

I know that banners won't usually look good when you look at them close up - but my method makes it come out a little worse than normal.

ANY help at all in this would be most useful!

Thank you!
 
Your increasing the image size 12 times. I'm not sure there's that much you can do to make it cleaner. There are only so many pixels in an image.
 
Create a Photoshop document at 1/24 scale @ 600dpi.
For example, your 168" x 96" banner would most likely be produced from a 7" x 4" document at 600dpi.
Paste your image into this document; only minor scaling of the image will be required.
 
snickelfritz is correct, it's unlikely that you will need to provide a high resolution, 100% scale piece of artwork.

Get in touch with your intending supplier/printer and ask for the specs they require. You might be pleasantly surprised!

/Doug
 
snickelfritz said:
Create a Photoshop document at 1/24 scale @ 600dpi.
For example, your 168" x 96" banner would most likely be produced from a 7" x 4" document at 600dpi.
Paste your image into this document; only minor scaling of the image will be required.
Click to expand...

That's your answer. Banners are produced from smaller files than you would ever imagine.
 
Really? That would provide me with more relief than you could possibly imagine!

Last night I was trying all sorts of crazy stuff to make it work!

I'll contact the printer and ask them what they need.

Thank you!
 
I create billboards that are 14'x48' I give it to them at 150dpi at 14"x48" and they all come out perfect. Typically it is 1'=1" ratio at 300dpi. If it is a sign that people are going to be close up on then I would up the quality. Also, from my experience the vinyl banner image quality isn't going to be that great no matter what you give them. Just talk to the vendor. I hate to rub it in, but you probably didnt need to spend 85$ lol
 
Argh!!!

I should have known to ask you guys before forking out that sort of money. Good thing I pass on those costs to other people.

Wow. All this time I have been blowing up images to all sorts of crazy sizes. Thanks for straightening me out!
 
Generally 200 ppi at final size is sufficient for banners -- even less if it is extremely large or viewed from considerable distance.

After running a professional noise filter (not the default one in PS), scaling up in small increments (110%) produces better results than all at once. You can create a Photoshop action that does this rather quickly. Sharpening techniques are also required after resizing. Before doing so, contact your printer because his equipment or RIP software may be better suited and he may prefer the smaller file to deal with.
 
Use Genuine Fractals

Hey dude i always have that problem where the image you need is not Hi-RES enough. I've been using Genuine Fractals and it works awesome. It is well worth the money in headaches down the road. It is a plugin for photoshop that is really nice. Check out the link below.

http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=2
 
I ...

...second the advices keeping the dpi in between 100 to 200 and crop/scale according to the final size, depending on the viewer distance. You don´t need maximum pixel count, when people are standing half a mile of, so to speak.

Help could be to use a minor "Gaussian Blur" (1.3 to 1.8) on the scaled picture, to smoothen out possible growing JPEG artifacts. Yet another way sometimes would be to double the scale (compared to your final output scale), do some heavy "Gaussian Blur" (2.5 to 4.7), and then rescale it back to the intended size.
 
Generally you should have to upsample from 300dpi for unless you're doing GIS or Geospatial in GeoQuad rendering...

I am currently editing a 500m world map, it's a monster 862,400px X 862,400px, and my quad core with 4GB Ram is chugging along nicely ;)
 
jonG said:
Hey dude i always have that problem where the image you need is not Hi-RES enough. I've been using Genuine Fractals and it works awesome. It is well worth the money in headaches down the road. It is a plugin for photoshop that is really nice. Check out the link below.

http://www.ononesoftware.com/detail.php?prodLine_id=2
Click to expand...

You speak the truth. Anyone dealing with the headache of sizing graphics up, down, sideways should have this program. Saves my life often.
 
I'm fairly familiar with photoshop, and there is no really reason to fully understand this technique because I cannot see myself making a banner for anyone in the near future, but so that I have the skill if required could someone just explain something to me.

I understand creating the document at a smaller size and at a high dpi, what i'm unsure is how/when do u scale the image? Do u finish the image and while still in PS change size or can you save as a certain file format and can upscale in, for example, Preview? Also if you can save as a file and do it in preview what file types work, TIFF, PNG etc? (I assume JPEG and Bitmapped wouldn't work).
 
I have used BlowUp from Alien Skin (I Believe) and it worked great. Blew up an image from a 6mp camera to 5 foot tall with it still looking crisp. Though that was also downsized from 300 dpi to 150. I had a Truck Wrap Company that wanted VERY hi-res files.
 
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