What is the best photographic format for making very large prints?

Question

I am aiming at producing large prints on canvas, say 2 x 1 meter. What is the best kind of source image to use ?

Answer 1

Shooting your images in Camera Raw format will give you the best detail and quality. For instance, my Nikon D80 will give me a raw image size of 25.6" x 17.138" at 240ppi with a 16 bit channel. I can change to 300ppi, resulting in a 20.48" x 13.71". Images may also be additionally resized and the resolution changed in camera raw format while processing the image with the camera raw software, however I have not yet had the necessity to experiment with making any sizes larger than discussed above.

Translating your meters into inches, you are aiming for approximately an 80" x 40" size. There are many ways to upsize a file, depending on the intentions of your use. Without knowing that information, I might suggest that the program Genuine Fractals is an industry standard for making large documents while preserving excellent quality.

Depending on the quality needed, the file can even be resampled in Adobe Photoshop by enlarging it in increments of 10% at a time, although I have experienced some loss of quality with this method.

In regards to the size you are referring to, this information regarding working with large formats in Adobe Photoshop may be helpful.

Graphics file formats differ in the way they represent image data (as pixels or as vectors), in compression technique, and in which Photoshop and ImageReady features they support. With a few exceptions (for instance Large Document Format (PSB), Photoshop Raw, and TIFF), most file formats cannot support documents larger than 2 GB.

The Large Document Format (PSB) supports documents up to 300,000 pixels in any dimension. All Photoshop features, such as layers, effects, and filters, are supported. You can save high dynamic range, 32‑bits-per-channel images as PSB files. Currently, if you save a document in PSB format, it can be opened only in Photoshop CS or Photoshop CS2. Other applications and earlier versions of Photoshop cannot open documents saved in PSB format.
Note: Most other applications and older versions of Photoshop cannot support documents with file sizes larger than 2 GB.

The Enable Large Document Format (.psb) option must be enabled in Preferences before you can save documents in PSB format. There is one exception: it is possible to open an existing PSB file and save it in PSB format even if the Enable Large Document Format (.psb) option is not selected in Preferences.

The size of your camera raw files in camera will vary with the type of camera you choose to use. Mine is, of course, only a medium format camera. You may want to check out large format cameras. There is a good camera review section at:

http://www.betterphoto.com/reviews.asp

Look for the large format cameras if that is what you are interested in. I hope this has been helpful. Best wishes.

Answer 2

to print out you normally need at least 300dpi

other than Raw format you could:
you could use a film camera. They are cheap now and you could get a good quality 35mm camera quiet cheaply second hand.

or if you have a tripod you could take a couple of pictures and try to stitch them together.

also depending on what you are printing it on you might get away by lowering the dpi to enlarge the pic this would be appropriate if you were hanging the canvas some where up high and the lack of detail would not be missed

Answer 3

4' x 5' negatives or bigger.
Digitally: RAW images in as many dpi as your camera can hold - even if one shot fills your card.
Source material is part of the creative process, someone can not tell you what is better.

Answer 4

i would say jpg at Cymk with 300dpi.