How many megapixels do I need to output poster sized prints?

Question

What other factors should I factor in when dealing with poster sized images? PPI? File Size? JPEG or Tiff?

Answer 1

Many people are talking in put here..Not out put.
For input you want the largest file size possible of course.However, One can get perfectly good results with 10-20 Megapixles.

Now for output, Never use Jpeg. It is an compression format and you will lose quality between your final out put a press.

Generally speaking you will use the Tiff format. You need to find out what their output is and match the size to that.
If you do not have that at this stage just keep it at the original size. Sizing pictures up or down is considered a destructive process. This is why it is best to size the picture from the original source for each project. In another words one would not to rez a picture up for one project then take that larger picture and rez it back down for the second project.

Now here is a trick so one does not have to mess file sizes all the time.
Say you are doing your own prints and are doing a test print at 5x7.
Go to image resize>Click off the resample button.
The resize the image.
Now the file size is unchanged, The DPI is well over 300 DPI.
But the printer can only read 300 DPI so it doesn't matter. The out put looks the same and the integrity of the file has not been changed.

Answer 2

For one thing when you output your image it should be no greater than 300dpi, anything else is sort of a waste, and besides how close does a person stand to a poster? Anyhow an average poster is about 27x41, and at 300dpi that should come out to around 278mb. Ideally if you are creating a poster of that size and you want to either be shooting with a high end digital camera, or at least a scan from a medium or large format chrome or neg. But lets face it you probably have neither but not to worry, if you don't mind some artifacting or pixelization, then you can enlarge or interpolate your image in Photoshop to the desired size. The image may not come out tack sharp and the colors may be a bit muddy, but like I said how close does a person stand to a poster.

Answer 3

It really depends on the end use. I used to operate an electrostatic printer and one client had us making 12ft X 12ft murals (in panels) with a resolution of about 10PPI, or around 1.5MP (though images got re sampled up to ridiculous file sizes before I got them) Sure it was nuts, but "the customer is always right"
But consider that to even see a 12ft wide image, you have to be a fair distance away, so say, 300PPI would be a waste of storage space (and a Jazz drive only held a gigabyte. A what drive? you ask; trust me, you don't want to know)

Answer 4

I use canon 30D for my poster work. You see the thing with posters is that usually they hang up on the billboards on the houses etc. So you don't see it from close-up - from far away on the other hand, artifacts pixelation of a printer everything this disappears :) Get good glass, get good camera and your set. 8mpx - 12mpx doesn't matter much ;)

http://www.sandrophoto.com

Answer 5

well that all depends. i work at best buy in san bernardino ca. and i know alot about cameras.for some thing the size of a poster you are going to want some thing with not only about 8-12 mega pixels but also you want a camera with great optical zoom and picture clarity. canons are the number one camera clarity wise and quality wise. so i highly recommend canon. personally i recommend getting either the sd870 if you want a small camera or if you were looking into buying a slr camera you should look into buying to canon 40d. the sd870 runs about $249 at best buy and the 40d runs about $1299.99 but it is toltally worth every penny. canons will last you for years. btw i am a guy on my girlfriends account. but you could email me at [e-mail] if you have any other questions

Answer 6

My daughter took an award winning self portrait a few years back on a Canon 300D, which is 6.3 megs. We had it blown up to a poster and it hangs on her wall. Perfectly fine for consumer use and it was a jpg

Answer 7

12mp...that is the best thing you can do when making poster size prints.