Last night I opened up the fedex package from Millers and took a
look at the high-school senior portraits inside. The largest was
a set of 8x10s. As a portrait photographer, my bread&butter is
wallets, 5x7 and 8x10 sized prints. It is extremely rare to get
any meaningful orders of print sizes larger than that.
Closely examining the 8x10s, I noticed something. There is
absolutely nothing to gain with more pixels. The image-detail
is maxed out and has as much detail as the naked eye can
resolve.
However, when examining the image on my computer it doesn't look
nearly as nice or sharp there. What's going on here? Well two
things. First of all, when viewing the full-image on screen
there is a lot of scaling going on to display the image in the
reduced form. This scaling adds blurring. Besides, you're
comparing a 300dpi print to a 92dpi screen. Secondly, when
pixel-peeping you are looking at the picture in a way that is
impossible to see in print form.
In print form, (especially with laser/chemical prints) there is
effectively "dot-gain" going on where you are illuminating
dye-cloud technology and there is a touch of lateral halation
going on which merges the individual pixels together in a way
that homogenizes the print. I don't necessarily see this in most
inkjet prints and you definitely do not get this in a dye-sub
print.
In larger print sizes, interpolation will start to "blur" the
image some. The lab I use has a RIP that tends to keep the edges
sharp (good edge-definition with no stair-stepping) while
softening the interior a touch. As such, I can (and occasionaly
do) go up to 24x30" and get amazingly sharp and perfectly
acceptable pictures.
What is amazing about large prints from digital, using an
outstanding RIP, is that if the details aren't there in the
print, they must not have existed in nature. Your brain accepts
the missing information as non-existant. Because the
edge-definition is so high it is assumed by the brain that ALL
detail in the image will be of the same high-definition. If the
veins in that leaf don't show up in the digital print, the
eye/brain is totally accepting that the leaf has no veins.
To draw another parallel... This is exactly how MPEG compression
works in audio as well as video. As long as you provide the
"edges", the eye/ear/brain will overlook the everything
inbetween is mush.
However, in the case of a large print (as done by Millers), I've
got to go really big before any of this is quantifiable.
AG
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