When To Go BIG!
Digital photos can be viewed on computer screens or printed on paper. Most of the time you are most likely to print on standard paper sizes like 4X6 or 5X7. Every now and then however you might want to make enlargements of some photos that you specially care about. Print enlargements quality depends on your digital camera mega pixels figure, here is how.
There is a certain resolution referred to as number of pixels in each digital photo that you take. Pixels can be represented by one number or sometimes as two numbers depicting the number of pixels over the X axis and the number of the Y axis (multiply these two numbers together to determine the total number of pixels in the digital photo).
You are actually printing these digital pixels on paper when you print your digital photos. If the paper size is big and the resolution is large, the digital print quality will be poor. The end result can be the ability to actually see the individual pixels on the print. This is known as pixelization.
So how can you establish what is the maximum print enlargement potential of a particular photo? The answer depends on many factors. Not only are the actual number of pixels in the photo a factor, other things can influence the answer such as the number of details in the photo and what the lighting conditions were to name a few. Plus as different people have different levels of what is acceptable in regards to quality, even the number of pixels can vary dependant on the individual.
A rough assessment of what comprises a good print quality is based on the pixels density or in other words the number of pixels per inch on the printed photo. This is also known as PPI (pixels per inch) and it represents the number of pixels over an axis line.
The following qualities are generally associated with a specific PPI number:
PPI 100 - fair to bad
PPI 200 - good
PPI 300 and up - very good
The next reasonable step would be to determine how many mega pixels are needed for good quality printing on a specific paper size. Calculating this number is very easy. All you need to do is to simply multiply the page length by its width in inches, resulting in the number of square inches on the page. Now multiply this number by the square of the PPI number and the result is the number of pixels on the page which is the number of pixels we want our source photo to have. Here are the numbers calculated for some common sizes (for 100,200 and 300 PPI respectively):
4X6 0.24MP 1MP 2MP
page 5X7 0.35MP 1.5MP 3MP
page 8X10 0.8MP 3MP 7MP
page 11X14 1.5MP 6MP 14MP
page 16X20 3MP 12MP 28MP
20X30 6MP 24MP 54MP
This table is just an estimation of what is considered suitable number of mega pixels for different paper sizes. There are many other factors to consider when making enlargements. Experimenting with different paper sizes is the best way to go but it can be expensive. In addition sometimes what is considered poor quality pixelization can actually be a nice artistic effect which strengthen the unfortunate fact that in addition to the above calculation some common sense and experience are needed in order to match a specific digital photo to a specific paper size enlargement.
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