Hiya DU Photogs;

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

I am looking for some advice/guidance/suggestions; I shoot in raw format and have my D90 set to the largest size. Any suggestions on what to look for when to have photos enlarged to say 24x36 or 18x24 etc?
Thanks!

[alfredo]

1. I don't think you will have issues

YMMV. A lot of factors can affect the finished product.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

8. I meant to ask;

YMMV?

[ManiacJoe]

10. Your Mileage May Vary

[Atman]

2. Get more storage!

Last edited Wed Jun 8, 2016, 07:17 AM - Edit history (1)

Having RAW available is good if you're going to do some serious work on your photos. I keep my DSLR set to save both RAW and JPG (max quality/size). It gives me lots of options, but can really slow the camera down if shooting a rapid series. The RAW photos come in at over 30mb, while the max quality jpg saves are about 9mb.

In my experience, for MOST pictures -- common stuff you're not planning on turning into a sofa-sized print, or doing some heavy Photoshop manipulation, the max JPG setting works beautifully, faster, and takes up a lot less space. If you know you're going for that special art shot, shoot everything in RAW so you have more options later. But otherwise...don't sweat it. I have lots of small-ish prints and postcards that I sell that were shot in jpg with max quality, and you'd have to be a wizard of some sort to be able to tell that they were not shot RAW and then manipulated.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

9. thanks I'll check that setting

on my camera

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

3. I guess I should have asked

Can Ijust find any shop that can print (copy) that size? Do I need to go to a photo shop or .....

[Major Nikon]

4. Shooting in raw format means you need to do post processing on the computer

Raw format means the raw data from the sensor (actually not quite, but close enough). This means instead of the post processing done inside the camera, you will be doing it outside the camera. So with some kind of post processing software like photoshop you'll need to finish up things like white balance and exposure adjustments.

The bigger you enlarge an image, the more a loss in quality will be noticed. With the D90, you'll start noticing the quality fall off with anything larger than 7.5x12 (12x enlargement). This may not matter depending on how far away the print is going to be viewed.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

5. thanks Major

I understand about raw v jpeg (size etc) just wondered if there is anything I can do to 'doctor' the photo so it shows well at 18x24.......etc

[Major Nikon]

6. Yes you can

One of the post processing steps typically done is sharpening, and this should be done at the resolution you intend to print with as a final step. Even though sharpening can be a pretty simple step, there's a lot of ways to skin that cat. Here's a pretty good article on the subject which is more relevant to photoshop, but should at least give you an idea of what's going on regardless of which post processing application you use.

http://www.bythom.com/sharpening.htm

Experience helps here, and usually when first starting out the tendency is to oversharpen. Another thing is you might want to practice on smaller prints, like say 8x10, to make sure what you are striving for on the monitor is what appears on the finished print, because often you will be surprised at the differences.

[womanofthehills]

7. I have color management software X-Rite i1 profiler

to calibrate the color on my screen to match the standards for printing. The first time you do it, it seems confusing but now I can calibrate my monitor in about 10 minutes.

Everyone has a different workflow. After I make all my adjustments in Raw, I open in Photoshop and enlarge the photo 100% to spot. Sometimes I go up to 200% to make sure the photo is really clean. Then I do a final small adjustment in Curves, than sharpen a little more in the lightness channel so as not to effect the color, and the last adjustment I do is fine tune Levels and set the output levels to 3 and 252. I will do all this in 16 bits and the last thing I do is take it down to 8 bits. My final file size is 50.0M which is standard for stock photography. I print my own photos with an Epson Stylus R2880 (a challenging printer to say the least) but I never print bigger than 12 x 18.