canvas print resolution

[arthur.daley]

I have to get some canvas prints made, never had any made before. My question is what is the minimum resolution you can get away with before it starts to show?

Arthur

[daviddeer]

Most prints are manipulated in corel/photoshop/gimp etc at around 300 dpi. Then the printer has something manageable to work with. But you can just about get away with 180 if the customer isn't too fussy. Also depends on the size. Minimum print resolution (in the printer settings) should be 720x720 dpi. Setting a very high dpi in the printer settings will drop loads more ink on the canvas and you'll get a darker print. An a3 print will show out more irregularities than an a4.

[arthur.daley]

hi David

When I was working as a tog the golden rule was 300dpi at finished size when printing on glossy photo paper or sending to a lab for a photographic print. However, one company I used to freelance for used to eek a 20 x 16 canvas print out of a jpeg from a 3mp digital slr (the 'proper' digital I coughed up for was a Canon D30 3mp dslr which cost me about £1800 body only - still got it in my 'old' camera bag). This was in the days of printing onto photopaper, laminating it face down to canvas and then peeling the paper backing off of the print to just leave the emulsion layer which was then heatsealed onto canvas. The paper print looked pretty poor until it was bonded onto the canvas when all the shortcomings of the print were lost in the texture of the canvas. Thing is I just can't remember how low they would take the resolution.


Arthur

[ArferMo]

I printed out a iphone holiday snap for a customer the other day on to canvas it was a 7Mb jpeg file and I printed it at 62 inches and it was stunning very sharp and only used 4.73cc of ink, so ink and canvas cost me £3 and some scrap wood for the frame.

[Smart Mart]

Depends on what size/quality the original image is & what size canvas you want to go to.

[daviddeer]

I printed out a iphone holiday snap for a customer the other day on to canvas it was a 7Mb jpeg file and I printed it at 62 inches and it was stunning very sharp and only used 4.73cc of ink, so ink and canvas cost me £3 and some scrap wood for the frame.

Crikey technology has really moved on. If you can get a 6 foot by 6 foot high resolution print from a 7mb file on an iphone you can throw away those scan-back cameras!
I have my images cruse scanned at 360 dpi in adobe rgb as they are usually oil paintings and the print has to exactly colour match the original as they are often hung next to one another. These files come out at around 300mb which quickly rises to 1.5gb when I add adjustment layers and colour controls in photoshop. I have used original negatives drum scanned to 1440 dpi and also scan-back images to 720 dpi.
I would learn to use proper stretcher bars though as the canvas has a tendency to sag after a while and cannot be tensioned again if you just staple it down to some wood, no matter how well you stretch it at first. Trouble is it adds around £12 to the finished article. Even more if you varnish it to prevent fading, flaking and getting surface damage.
I would imagine you are using 280 gsm canvas which is around £20 a roll. This is a little thin and does stretch quite a bit.
Sounds like you have a perfect set-up with high margins, knocking out a 6 foot print for 25 quid should have the punters flocking in. A gallery wrapped print at 18" x 20" is nice easy size for most homes. Have a word with your local litho printer he might like to add it to his portfolio and you can sell them to him (wrapped, finished and strung) at £20 each or £15 for bulk orders (say 10+) and still be in profit.

Canon D30 3mp dslr

The resolution of the image on these cameras is 2048 x 1536 dpi at 3mp so the image quality would be more than enough for a 720 dpi print at A3. Photographic paper has the wonderful quality of producing a lovely continuous tone so when transferred the dots of emulsion grain would virtually disappear. I worked with a wonderful photographer who photographed oil paintings with his normal Nikon camera so that the drum scanned image was better than any digital scan-back. But he went digital and also the way of the wind.
I really miss real photography, ilford film, duo-tone, upright cameras and the like. No matter what anyone says there is something magical about a proper photographic print developed in your own lab.