Expanding photographs and drawings..

[John Stephens]

I am interested in doing large murals using both existing and new photographs and drawings . I know that if an image is vector you can expand without having to worry about distortion and blurring of the image. I have been told that
you cannot really expand digital photographs to a large (ex. 5' x 7') size because you will get an unclear image because of pixleization(sp). Some have also told me if it is a drawing, you must have it drum scanned at a service to be able to expand it with good detail. Some drum scanning services have told me that in order to blow up a photograph to a large mural type size, it must be taken on film originally as opposed to digitally.
They say the best is to provide them with film or slides(not digital).
I would appreciate comments from anyone who can steer me it the right direction for information on these subjects. I don't mind paying for a good camera but it sounds like it can't be digital. Is there anything that you can do when someone has a digital file of normal size that they would like blown up to several feet big?
I am little confused and out of my areas of expertise.
Any advise will be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,
John

[Joe Pelonio]

I do sometimes make signs where a digital print on vinyl is done at 60" h x any width. We find that at minimum you need a file that is 300 dpi at actual size.
Typically it will be 20-100 MB. You cannot make a typical $200 digital camera make a file that good.

There are photos available online (for a price, of course) that are that good, and are downloaded from an FTP site or sent on CD/DVD.

We have worked with photos taken on a very good digital camera that worked up to about 3' x 6'. After that, even those would start to pixelate, so a professional camera is needed.

Film pictures can be blown up larger by a professional service because there are no pixels that enlarge.

[Pete Simmons]

I just started doing what you are talking about.

I will post some results in a few days.

The first image I did was from a 100 meg file that I purchased.

If you want big, you need either vector or pixels.

PM me if you want more info.

[Doug Griffith]

I've worked on many very large printed images and everything Joe says is right on. You also need to take a few more thing in consideration:

1) Do you have the processing power to work on such large files? It takes some serious juice.

2) At what distance will the murals be seen. If they are going to be from afar, pixelation won't matter as much. If at an arms distance, then you definitely need high res output.

3) Drum scanners are practically outdated (Imacon) and there are some serious digital cameras that can get the resolution. They cost too much for mere mortals though. You would have to hire a pro photographer to take your pictures.

4) Find out the optimum resolution from whoever is outputting your files before doing any work. Also ask about color space, file formats, etc...

5) Work at 100% physical size and never scale up and try not to scale down. Otherwise you'll get pixel sampling and the image will get "soft" and blurry.

6) Avoid lossy image formats (ie jpeg). You will see artifacts when outputting at large sizes.

I'm sure there's more...

Cheers

[Pete Simmons]

This one is 3 feet by 2 feet.

6" x 6" tiles.

Image was 300 dpi

The grout lines are not as pronounced as this photo shows.

I had to get below the mural in order to keep my shadow off the image while I took the photo, that and the direct sunlight highlighted the seams.

These tiles come with small nubs to establish the grout lines if you were to use them as regular tiles. For this frame mounted mural I sanded the nubs down which leaves very small, even grout lines. I did not use grout to mount these tiles. I used one of the liquid nails glues.

[Doug Bergstrom]

As long as you have a good quality scan or digital photo you can produce very large graphics from them without any loss or very minimum loss. We have taken 6 megapixel camera images and made 8'x10' tradebooth walls that look sharp when you walk up to them. Photoshop offer a lot of ways to help enlarge photos and keep them sharp but now we use software like genuine fractals that will let you enlarge photos up to 1000% or more and still look great.
PM me if you want additional information.
Thanks

[Duane Parcells]

Hi John

I have done a fair amount of wall murals on mirrors, tile, glass and even a few out of red cedar. I use this........Photo Zoom Pro 2 It is designed to do what you want. You can download for free and try it. It leaves a watermark until paid for but you can blow a picture up to wall size and check out the quality.
Makes a huge difference. The link below takes you to their homepage.

http://www.benvista.com/main/content/content.php?page=ourproducts&section=photozoompro_1

Duane

[Frank Corker]

Pete that dolphin picture looks fantastic!

[Dean Rose]

Hi Pete, I'll second what Frank said. That really does look fantastic. Where did you purchace the the photo from? I haven't seen any that big for sale.

[Pete Simmons]

Lasertile.com


$150 for 1 photo.

[Larry Bratton]

Hi John:
I own a couple of Nikon digital cameras. One a D70 and the other being a D40. Both are in the 6 Megapixel range. I recently made a photo of a guy in boxing pose and made it big for a wall decoration. I made the photo in RAW format at the camera's largest file size. The photo out the camera was 7" x 9.8" at 266dpi. I resized it in Photoshop to the size I wanted and printed it on my Canon 8000 series printer. I processed the image on my Toshiba laptop with 2GB of Ram. It was about 36" x 48" then 734.3 MB. Point is that a good quality Nikon or Canon professional grade camera with a good processor will get you what you need. (this was a color photo too, if your converting for engraving, your going to end up with a 1 bit image eventually and it would be smaller file wise) You need a lot of RAM in your processing computer too.
You also need some good photo editing software. I use and prefer Photoshop CS3, however, others will work. I also have Photozoom and it does a decent job resizing and resampling photos.
Good luck with it.

[Darren Null]

A second vote for genuine fractals (it's both a photoshop plugin and a standalone app- or was last time I looked). You need a good clear image to start with (so if you can, switch your camera to RAW mode, so you aren't saving it as a lossy JPG). I use a Canon Digital Rebel 400D and that does just fine, as well as being quite accessibly priced.

You can also use (free!) programs like Autostitch to tile images together to make 1 huge one.

If you have photoshop, there's no rule to say that you have to stick to one image. You can make yourself a composite image up, made of as many images as you like, with time and a bit of a learning curve. Also, be prepared to sit there for a while while your HDD mutters to itself.