KODAK 20"x30" prints

[jack duren]

anybody ever done this online? have some old scanned family photos. would like to make framed pictures of them for the bar area. thx...jack

[Frank Hagan]

Used to do it in a company I worked for ... but they were a different kind of picture! They were usually of accident scenes, injuries, etc. for courtroom use. Largest size we normally used was 30 x 40.

You get increased "grain" when you enlarge a photo, so the size of the original negative (or resolution of the digital file) will be a big factor in how well it looks. For some of the photos we had of accident scenes shot with a 35mm camera with 400 film, the picture could get pretty grainy. They looked OK from 6' away or more, but not close up. I'm not an expert on this, but evidently if the same picture was taken with a lower ASA film, the grain size would be smaller and the enlargement better.

So I guess it depends on where you're starting ... original print, or negative, or digital file.

[John Hart]

Jack,

I've never done any quite that large, but if your scans are super high resolution, I would think that you could blow it up in Photoshop and clean any pixelization out of it using the air brush and the healing brush tools. I've taken some smaller pics and blown them up to 8X10 with pretty good success. Sounds lke a great project.

[jack duren]

thx for the replies. ive got a few that were scanned with very high dpi. guess best answer for this is to just send one..jack

[Aaron Koehl]

Jack,

I've never done any quite that large, but if your scans are super high resolution, I would think that you could blow it up in Photoshop and clean any pixelization out of it using the air brush and the healing brush tools. I've taken some smaller pics and blown them up to 8X10 with pretty good success. Sounds lke a great project.

My mother graduated from HS (many many) years ago, and like most graduates, had a number of graduation prints ordered. Over the years, she lost all of her high school prints, less one proof which we found stuck to an old box. Unfortunately, this sole photographic remnant was faded, torn, bent, and had molded in one corner. The old proof, being a proof, still had the photographer's text, and to complicate matters was only 2 inches in length.

The picture on the right is a scan of the original; the finished product was a full 8x10 sent to be printed (on the left). The photos attached were a work in progress before the print was fully reconstructed. (This was my first reconstruction). The enlargement and print turned out awesome, after some extra color tweaking.

[Bill Lewis]

My mother graduated from HS (many many) years ago

Aaron, It couldn't have been THAT many years ago, her graduation picture is in color!

Good job on the restoration!

[John Hart]

That looks really good Aaron! You say you did the work yourself? What software did you use?You did a very nice job on the blending of the background to eliminate the creases and text. That musta been hours of fun. I like doing it because it's so relaxing. Kinda like painting. Nice work!

[Dave Brandt]

I had good luck blowing a couple of pics up at Kinkos. Actually, they did the work, not me. They were just pictures of our yard, but both came out really good. In fact, we're going to have them framed. Not grainy at all, at least from a normal viewing distance.

[Ken Fitzgerald]

We have a local drug store that also sells photography equipment and develops film. I had a portrait of my father taken during WWII. I was told it was originally taken as a black and white photo and then hand painted colors were added? Anyway it had deteriorated dramatically and my sisters and brother wanted copies. I took it to this drug store, they scanned it into a system, restored the color, took out a crease/tear and the new copies were better than the original and quite inexpensive. I've since had a computer built for my wife who is a hobbiest photographer/videographer. The Dell program that came with the computer does restorations like you did Aaron! Great work!

[Aaron Koehl]

Aaron, It couldn't have been THAT many years ago, her graduation picture is in color!

Good job on the restoration!

That's true.. it's all about my frame of reference. I mean, Ken (or Keith )-- now that's a whole different story.

[Steven Wilson]

20x30 is very large and grain will be a huge problem. The 20x30 prints that I've made were all shot from either a 220 film camera (Kodachrome 25) with a 4x5 internegative made, or made with a 4x5 view camera. A 20x30 made a 35mm just plain looks bad. Now, if you're starting with a 3x5, 4x6, or 8x10 print and having it scanned they'll need to have a whole bunch of megapixels. I have a 5 MP camera and it's not bad printed at 8x10 but starts looking too grainy at 11x14 for my tastes - 20x30 would be in another league. What specs is the company quoting

[Aaron Koehl]

That looks really good Aaron! You say you did the work yourself? What software did you use?You did a very nice job on the blending of the background to eliminate the creases and text. That musta been hours of fun. I like doing it because it's so relaxing. Kinda like painting. Nice work!

Thanks for the compliment. I used scanned it on an HP flatbed and did all of the editing in Adobe Photoshop 7 with a Wacom graphics tablet. I did it as a gift, so I wanted it to be just right. I spent a few days on it working on and off.

I used the Stamp tool almost entirely (which allows instant copying of nearby areas to match the colors and blending). The background doesn't play so well with the stamp tool because of the color gradients. In this case, I started with the stamp tool to cover up the tears, and then switched to randomly shaped cutouts with the Patch tool, which allows the color transitions to be less choppy.

[Aaron Koehl]

We have a local drug store that also sells photography equipment and develops film. I had a portrait of my father taken during WWII. I was told it was originally taken as a black and white photo and then hand painted colors were added? Anyway it had deteriorated dramatically and my sisters and brother wanted copies. I took it to this drug store, they scanned it into a system, restored the color, took out a crease/tear and the new copies were better than the original and quite inexpensive. I've since had a computer built for my wife who is a hobbiest photographer/videographer. The Dell program that came with the computer does restorations like you did Aaron! Great work!

I have several color prints of my family taken in the early 80s and late 70s that have faded red over the years. These won't require any reconstruction, but quite a bit of color manipulation. Once I knock these out of the way, I have an old, dark (faded) tin type that will really be a challenge, as I plan to restore and colorize it.

[Tim Morton]

Thanks for the compliment. I used scanned it on an HP flatbed and did all of the editing in Adobe Photoshop 7 with a Wacom graphics tablet. I did it as a gift, so I wanted it to be just right. I spent a few days on it working on and off.

I used the Stamp tool almost entirely (which allows instant copying of nearby areas to match the colors and blending). The background doesn't play so well with the stamp tool because of the color gradients. In this case, I started with the stamp tool to cover up the tears, and then switched to randomly shaped cutouts with the Patch tool, which allows the color transitions to be less choppy.

Have you had a chance to play with the "healing brush" in Photoshop CS? If you do much retouching that is worth the cost of the upgrade in itself. its like the "rubber stamp" tool on steroids...no more problems with unexpected gradient missmatching that causes those dragging smears...

[Aaron Koehl]

I do use the healing brush a bit, but I seem to have a faster workflow with a combination of other tools, producing just the right effect for me. It (the healing brush) is definitely a great tool, but I typically use it for smaller areas.