Client wants 300 DPI image
baffled13_f41e881498
Posts: 10
Hi there,
Hoping someone can help with a problem i have here.
I've been contacted by a company who would like to license some renders of mine with the intention of making some large scale prints. Things seemed to be going fine until the contact said that they needed images of at least 300 DPI.
Now i looked into this and found a lot of information, mostly regarding the need to specify the actual size of the print, the problems of DPI when really were looking at PPI and the limitations of a displays resolution. Got some useful stuff here :
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/viewthread/15210/
and here :
An example of a final render for me is an aspect ratio of 10 x 10 and pixel size of 6000 x 6000. To me this seems to be DPI (or PPI) of 600, which should be more than enough.
The client however says that my thinking is wrong and has just said that they could be making prints of up to 50 x 50 feet.
So if i'm right the client just isn't getting it but if the client is right a 50 x 50 ft print at 300 DPI would need me to make a render at a resolution of 180,000 x 180,000.
My renders can be blown up to a good size without much of a problem but 50 ft seems like a lot...
There is a communication problem here but i don't really have the experience to resolve it. I guess i'm trying to tell them the render is 300+ DPI but they don't get it - am i right? If anyone can offer some insight, i'd be very grateful.
Thanks for reading WT.
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Comments
If he's going to blow it up that large, you would want to use a program like Blow Up from Alien Skin:
http://www.alienskin.com/blowup/
I know Paul Gaboury at Pixologic says they use it to produce Billboards and such. Also, make sure you convert to CMYK. RGB is only for monitors and such and not print.
There is really no need for 50ft by 50ft image to be 300dpi. As a print of that size would be designed to be viewed from a distance. Even a top quality camera wouldn't be capable of that feat. Most billboard primt are no higher than 50 dpi and ocassionally as low as 15.
As Cris described the image would need some kind of optimisation and generally the image would be scaled up to that size rather than artwork produced at 1 to 1. Even scaled you may still be talking some large images and in turn large render times.
300dpi is really just a standard that everyone in the industry uses to avoid confusion. That way if they order something They know it will look good in print, and will fit into their page layouts etc. What they don't want is to order a 5" x 10" image, for example, and receive an image that is 72dpi, because then they will have to print it 4x smaller to get it to look decent. Because of that, everyone just works in 300dpi, and then there's no confusion.
Im not sure if Daz allows you to specify the DPI- I haven't been using it all that long, but if not, just render it out 4x larger and covert it afterwards to 300 dpi in photoshop or whatever.
No, I don't think they will expect you to render out 180,000x180,000 images. I've printed out billboards for shop walls, and used a 2048x2048 pixel, 300dpi image. Posters are never photo quality.
Just convert your work to 300dpi when you submit it. Dont upscale- keep the original quality, but 6000 x 6000 should be more than enough. If not, then tell them how large you are capable of going, and they must work around that, just like 99% of other printers work around the size limitations of Digital cameras.
50 feet x 50 feet at 300 DPI is beyond ridiculous. Someone who knows so little about printing realities is someone I would send elsewhere, myself, but that's just me. Clients like that are prone to unreasonable demands, then say "Why would I pay you? You'll get EXPOSURE as an artist!"
50'x50' prints would not be printed at 300 DPI by a print facility, the cost (and time) would be astronomical. The DPI is far lower for these size prints, the distance from the viewer make up for lack of precision. If they are asking for 50'x50' at 300 dpi they are sniffing printer cleaning fluid.
I used this http://www.alienskin.com/BlowUp/ when I had to deal with clients who wanted large format prints, meaning I didn't have to really produce the source image at a large scale. Edit, I see it has already been mentioned lol.....
I am laughing here, actually out loud. 50x50@300 is the most retarded thing I have ever heard. Billboards are typically 30dpi lowend 75dpi high end, and that is REALLY high end, for something street level. In short, a few questions to ask them, AND GET IN WRITING.
What are the final size and print dementions? and I will render the image to your standards. A standard billboard is 14x48 or so depending on where you are from. if you render with an aspect ratio of 10x10 they would need to scale down the image so much if that was their requirement they would actually lose detail in the final print when they scale it down to fit the board due to the actual print resolution. In short the person asking you has no idea what they are talking about.
While an image is digital and viewed digitally it has NO physical size. For example, if your screen resolution is 1024x768 and you view a 800x600 image it will look a certain size on your screen. Change to 1280x1024 and the same 800x600 image looks smaller even though the number of pixels did not change.
There are three terms for DPI:
DPI (the one that everyone is confused about)
This value is determined by the program you are printing from!!! Regardless of where the image originated, as stated above, digital images DO NOT have a physical size! This DPI allows the computer to tell the printer how many pixels of the images are being printed per physical inch on the paper.
Physical DPI (printers)
This is the printers ability to print X number of ink or toner dots per physical inch on the page. 300dpi is enough for text but sucks for images. 720 dpi is the minimal for images. the higher the better to a degree as it will get to the point where the human eye will not notice the difference.
PPI (pixels per inch - scanners)
Its the exact same thing but only refers to scanning an image into digital. It basically means how many pixels will be used per phyical inch of the image being scanned.
To read more on where the whole issue started, please see this article here:
http://www.scantips.com/no72dpi.html
So do get in writing, and in laymans terms if need be, exactly what the client wants.
This is an oversimplification of things. Yes, printers have a dots per inch, which is not related to the DATA of the image you send over.
That is why some printers boast insane 2880 DPI. The issue with this is accuracy, how many dots overlap and that sort of thing.
Frankly with modern printers, the printers DPI ability is the least of your concerns. Other than talking about laser printers, probably goign to be hard to find a photo printer that doesn't boast a high DPI.
(Though I think advising people there are different worlds is important, sometimes it still just confuses people LOL)
Scanners are geenrally SPI -Samples per inch. Images are PPI - Pixels per inch. printers are DPI, but as larsmidnatt says that is not directly related to the image resolution as ink dots don't have the dynamic range of pixels (usually each colour is on or off), so it takes multiple printer dots to show a single pixel.
Any self-respecting billboard or grande-size poster printer will have their preferred software to perform the blowups. This function may also be in the printer itself, so your better choice is to speak directly to the person or company doing the printing.
It is possible, though unlikely, they want a 300 dpi poster print for close viewing. This is usually the realm of major Hollywood movie releases, though, where they plaster the venue with large blowups of the actors or scenes, and pose people in front of them. But consider a 50 foot tall billboard is five stories tall. I think the person who contacted you may be either intentionally wasting your time, uninformed, or something I don't want to print here.
As for RGB v CMYK: for this size, the printing process is guaranteed to be digital, so the needs of the RIP or driver used by the printer is the determining factor. Ask for file specifications, and if they have it, a printer profile that you can use in Photoshop or other software to do a soft proof. This is another reason to make direct contact with the printer prior to delivering any materials. I'd even do it before accepting the job.
Hmmm... 50'x50'@300DPI sounds pretty demented to me!
Oh, and if you talk to the actual printer guy, i.e. the guy who runs the huge professional printer, make sure you both understand what is meant by "DPI"! Keeping in mind that in our world of monitors and simple home printers the actual term we should be using is "PPI" (Pixels Per Inch). We can use the term PPI and DPI interchangeably, but to a printer person the term "DPI" (Dots Per Inch) can mean something completely different. In the printing world they are concerned with "dots" of ink, printing enough 'dots" of different colored ink close enough together creates the illusion of the spectrum of colors, i.e. three or four "dots" are needed to make what we call a "pixel". And the "dots" can be arranged in different spatial patterns to get different effects. It's a much more complicated world than our simple matrix of evenly spaced square pixels. And because they often deal in subtractive color blending rather than additive color blending they usually deal with CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) colors rather than RGB (Red, Green, Blue) colors.
If you talk in terms of "PPI" (Pixels Per Inch) it should be pretty clear to everybody what you mean. However, if they are truly professionals they should be able to tell you the minimum level of technology that they need from you so that they can use their professional hardware, software, and experience to convert it to their desired end product. You should only have to deal with knowing the number of horizontal and vertical pixels, of the image they want you to give to them. And you can probably get away with producing it in RGB colors.
Also, do they expect to receive from you a printed image or a digital file? Make sure you know. It makes a difference in how you interpret their specification.
When you start delving into it, color is actually a very sophisticated science and printing is actually a very complex technology. But real experts should be able to make their needs known to you in a simple and direct specification. If not, then you're probably dealing with an entry level apprentice who likes to use big words and jargon.
The proper response to that, of course, is "People die of exposure."
It's a genuine problem, I've had to deal with similar customer requests — some people just don't realise they're asking a "how long is a piece of string" type of question.
Could have been worse, it could have been something like the (hopefully) apocryphal request to print an animated .gif image...
"A 300PPI image2 doesn't mean anything without a size attached - an image 1 pixel square is not going to have any detail whether it'ss et to 1PPI or 1,000PPI. PPI is a meaningful value if and only if combine with a physical size.
The only thing that matters is the number of pixels in the image. The DPI/PPI setting is just metadata in the file, and only specifies to an output device that wishes to use it to set an expected printed size. As Richard points out, simply saying "300 pixels/inch" is meaningless if a pixel dimension is not also provided. A 300x300 image at 300 pixels per inch prints out to a postage stamp. Hardly useful for a billboard!
Not sure if someone else has already answered this sufficiently or not, but I work in publishing where 300 dpi is needed for everything. To make sure my covers render large enough, I typically render at 5000 or sometimes 7000 pixels for the longest side. That way, when it renders at the default resolution, I can safely change the ppi in Photoshop without compromising the image. Just be sure the resample box isn't checked so it maintains image quality.
Thank you all so much for the replies. I really am trying to make this deal work and while the information you have provided here may not cause that to happen, it does give me a warm sense of being correct :)
The 50 x 50 ft thing is just an upper end maximum and of course I would grow old and die waiting for my 180,000 x 180,000 pixel render to even start.
The most recent - and possibly final - email I've recieved asks me to re-render the image at 300 dpi (which i do not think means anything) and to make it at least 6000 pixels wide (which they all are already).
Anyway, thanks again to everyone. This has all helped to clarify my thoughts on the whole thing.
As someone mentioned, the 300dpi in addition to being a measurable physical attribute of a printed image, can also be a metadata value included in the metadata of a digital image that may or may not be essential to the printer or his hardware/software. You may have created your (for example) 3000x3000 pixels image to be printed at 10"x10" but if its metadata doesn't say 300dpi the printer people might get all bent out of shape. Which they shouldn't, because an alert printer person with sophisticated printers and software should be able to accomodate the mismatch.
There are ways of creating, reading, and editing image metadata values but they are highly dependent on your software. For example I don't know what metadata values DAZ inserts into its rendered images, or how you can specify it.
DS doesn't insert any PPI value - that's why some image viewers or editors show renders as 72PPI and some as 96PPI.
Yes, what you're seeing there isn't a (wrong) value in the image file metadata, it's the default "no value supplied" setting of whichever program you're using to look at the image.
I have a pretty strong suspicion that the "communication problem" the OP is having, is because they're not talking to an actual printer, they're talking to someone in Marketing or Sales who doesn't quite understand the jargon.
As WillowRaven notes,you can change the PPI in Photoshop, and you don't need to re-render the image. If your render is at 72 or 96 dpi, with the desired 6000 pixels size, just bring it into Photoshop and reset the Pixels/inch value. Click off the Resample Image box; this merely changes the PPI value stored in the file, and makes no changes to the actual pixels that make up the image. You will see that when you turn resampling off, Photoshop obeys by not altering the pixel count. It merely changes the expected output size.
Not mentioned in this thread is the important aspect of being sure your file is properly tagged with a document profile. Don't send an untagged file. I don't know what version of D|S you're using, or if this is Iray or 3DLight. But with at least Iray, saved files are properly tagged as sRGB. (This denotes the file is saved in RGB color space, and uses the sRGB document profile, one of several popular and common profiles for digital imaging.) If editing/resaving in Photoshop, be sure this tag is not removed. Don't send a file that lacks a document profile. You can verify the current profile in Photoshop by looking at the status bar. Choose 'Document Profile' if it's not shown already.
So far so good, but make sure the person or company printing your file expects and can use sRGB. I know Cris said you should send it as CMYK, but don't convert it quite yet without first consulting with the person or company doing the printing. More and more digital printers are set to take RGB files, or prefer to do the conversion themselves. They base their RGB-to-CMYK conversions against their proprietary printer profile to ensure better color fidelity.
That's good to know, Tobor.
This morning over breakfast I realized I made a mistake about D|S tagging saved files with a document profile. In fact, it doesn't tag output files with a profile. I forgot that to complete the steps, you need to be sure to bring the file into Photoshop and either manually apply a document profile, or have it automatically done for you (Edit->Color Settings).