Howdy,
I have decided to have a few prints of photos that I like made and I crop some of them down. I just noticed that in the PhotoLab Application, the Metadata shows the photo size and evidently the crop size(?): 8256 x 5504 (crop: 2614 x 3637).
However when I export the required tiff, I get an entirely different and larger cropped size, according to the macOS file info Dimensions: 5934 x 8256, and the same information given with Preview Info and Affinity Photo 2.
I am trying to figure out what would be the largest size nice looking print that I could have made of the photo. The company has some ratio calculations on their site and I have also read about simply dividing the longest side by 300 (dpi) for the largest size.
I am wondering;
Why the difference in PhotoLab VS Export size
Which method to use for photo print enlargement (Nations Photo Lab is who I am currently using). As you can tell, I am completely new to this photo printing stuff.
Magazine quality prints are said to require 300 ppi, but if you print a poster, resolution can be reduced to 150 or even lower ppi, unless you want to pixel peep the posters too.
Printing services usually tell you, which pixel dimensions you need for any given print size. The provided layouts will let you know when your input isn’t big enough. Play with the templates and you’ll find out. Whitewall.com seems to print nicely on all kinds of carriers, they might be worthwhile checking for reference.
Metadata of files list sizes of previews and thumbnails too, double-check what the sizes actually express. DxO TIFFs are usually two page files wirh a standard sized image and an extra small placeholder that will be replaced if one selects lossless processing with Nik plugins. Most apps can handle this situation, but they mught not tell you that your TIFF contains two pages.
Also, files can get taller or wider than the original image suggests because of optical corrections.
Distance at which you will look the image drives needed ppi.
For example when I work for billboard advertising campaign, the posters requiring the highest resolution are those put up on bus shelters (people can get their noses stuck to the posters), while the largest (4m x 3m) are those requiring the least resolution. The others fall somewhere between these two extremes.
I think that you got it right and I had for some reason messed with the settings on export. Unfortunately, I did not see a way to get it back to the default settings, so I deleted every file on my iMac that had to do with DxO (and I went very deep into various System files) and reinstalled DXO Photolab.
Now a cropped photo does export to a more reasonable, expected size.
Thank you for the advice, I shall look into Whitewall.
I see that you do use a Mac. I use DxO as I had mentioned earlier because I truly hate subscription software. For quick looks I use Preview and other things I use Affinity Photo 2.
When I look at a photo at Actual Size in Preview, it looks awful, where as in Affinity Photo 2, it looks just fine. Is Preview simply that bad or perhaps showing me what a 300 dpi print would look like at actual size?
Unfortunately, I did not know what the default size, if any, was, else I would have typed it in. I suppose that Default would depend on the camera sensor size, before cropping, would it not? Pure guessing
No. Not related to sensor. Only fixed output sizes or full size.
What’s important when exporting is what your output is intended for; not where it comes from.
Can’t handle “awful”, which describes your feelings rather than what actually is, like e.g. “colour looks too warm” or “size is bigger than what I expected” etc.
Nevertheless, you might want to check how Preview.app displays images and pdfs:
