I recently completed my first Vue picture, and thought I'd go to this ritzy printing place that does good high quality prints. When I got it back, you can really notice some pixels at the edge of objects, and even in some textures. The picture looks fine on the computer though, you can't see any pixels. Which brings me to ask, what settings should an image have in Photoshop for printing? I rendered the image to screen, so it's 1024 x 696 pixels (I cribbed the bottom a little afterwards). Photoshop, under the image size menu, says the image Print Size is 14.2 x 9.6 inches in size, and the resolution is 72 pixels per inch. Is this too low? And Resample Image is set to bicubic. Please help! What settings do I want so I don't get blocky prints? And yes, I'm sure that it's not the printing place's fault.

computer is 72 dots per inch. your desktop inkjet printer is often 300 dots per inch. this means one of two things: you print it and get an image that seems between 1/3 and 1/4 the size it 'was on screen'. Or you print it and the pixels are so big you could give them all their own names and pass out cigars. :) if you make a 1024 * 696 image that will be 3.4 by 2.3 inches in size. Only a few hairs bigger than your average drivers license. Let's say you want a good quality 8 1/2 by 11 inch print. That means you need to render to 2550 by 3300 pixels. And I would strongly recommend doing it in Ultra mode. This is one of those kinds of renders that you start when you go to bed. stop and save in the morning. And then restart the next evening before going to bed. For about a week most likely. At 72 DPI you will see the pixels. Even at 300 you'll see them a bit. If you have a printer that can do color higher than 300 dpi then you're lucky. To render for it just take it's color dpi max and multiply that by the dimension in inches you want on the final print. If you take it to a printer shop they might have a printer than has a dpi in the thousands. If you can afford to print on it then the render could take you a good year or two to complete. :)

Well....to clarify....your image was 72 pixels per inch. The whole issue can be quite complex depending on the printing process. I will use ink jet as an example 'cause it is the easiest to understand. Example: my ink jet printer prints at 1440x720 dots per inch. If I print an image which is dimensioned to be, say, 150 pixels per inch, the extra "resolution" of my printer is not wasted since many dots are used to make a pixel. You can see this from the fact that the printer has only 3 colours and black...so, to make the rest of the colour spectrum, it mixes a varying amount of dots of the colours it has to make the actual colour of the pixel. So, the higher the resolution of the printer, the smoother the colour tones will be. Now, for the picky people out there, I fudged the above explanation a bit because there is a different dot size and resolution in ink jet technology, but the basic idea still holds. Well, back to your question, having your image at 300 ppi is actually usually excessive (but dependent on the print technology). If you had a hypothetical printer with dye for every colour in the spectrum (i.e. it would be able to print every pixel directly the colour it was supposed to be...no mixing), you would not be able to see the pixels at 200 ppi unless you stuck your nose right up to the paper. For example I printed a 3600x2700 image at 32" x 24". This is only 112.5ppi! But, by advantage of ink jet technology (plus the printer was 600x600 dpi) and the diffusion pattern of the dots, the pixels were blended to a degree that the made the division between them invisible. Ideally, I would have printed at about 150 ppi. Conclusion: don't know if anything above made any sense, but, 72 ppi is too low, but 300 dpi is also probably too much. While it is dependent on your print process, I would go for between 150 and 200 ppi. 300 shouldn't hurt, but if it means an extra day of rendering, it's probably not worth it. phew.... -karl

Okay kiddies. I'm gonna clear this up once and for all. Just let me start by saying that I am a graphic artist by trade and have been for almost 8 years. I'm gonna try to make this explanation easy to understand for people who don't quite know how this works...I have to do it nearly every day to customers on the telephone. I work for a magazine and so I'm gonna explain what resolution means to us, who have artwork printed at a professional printer. First off, the whole business of printing on an injet kinda defeats the purpose of going to a printer to have your image printed in the first place (unless of course you don't HAVE an inkjet). I make an image at home 1024x768 pixels. I don't even run it thru Photoshop...I just print it directly to my inkjet (which is 1200x1200 pixels). It prints pretty darn nice. It looks a little pixelated, but all in all pretty decent. Of course the image was only 72 dpi because I didn't change the "pixel resolution" in Photoshop. It's also very large. Why does it look good you say? Because contrary to popular belief, injets do not apply the same technology as a 4 color press. On an injet, the printer sprays all 4 colors on the paper at once. It uses a more scattered pattern than a 4 color press thereby breaking up the edges of the pixels that you would definitely see on a 4 color press print. A print made on a 4 color press is passed separately thru the press for each color and each color dot is placed "on top" of the color before it. Since the pattern is not scattered, the pixels will show at only 72 dpi. Our magazine, for instance, requires that every image in a camera ready piece be AT LEAST 300 dpi. Anything less than that will look "soft" (slightly blurry if you like) and at resolutions less than 200, will look downright awful. Pixelated, grainy, bitmapped, crunchy...however you want to phrase it. You can take a 72 dpi picture and make it 300 dpi in Photoshop and increase the resolution...however, it will make the image fractionally smaller than it was before. Think if it this way...72 dpi as an ink dot the size of a pencil eraser and 300 dpi as an ink dot the size of a pin tip--72 dpi eraser size dots 1 yard apart and 300 dpi pin tip size dots 1 micrometer apart. Finer is better. You can resample the image in Photoshop and increase the pixel resolution without changing the size; however this will give you unsatisfactory results because Photoshop has to "guess" what information to put in the same space where there is no information originally. That's why you can resample in Bilinear, Bicubic or Nearest Neighbor...it will use a different formula for each, none being really satisfactory. The ONLY way to increase the pixel resolution of an image in Photoshop and keep the original integrity is not to resample the image at all, which of course makes the original image much, much smaller. So, to make a long-winded story short, your original image must be rendered at a very high resolution (at least 3000x3000 pixels) to be a decent size when printed at a resolution at 300 dpi (in an inkjet 300 dpi doesn't sound that great and it isn't...on a 4 color press, it's quite sufficient). Pick up any magazine that has decent color printing on decent paper and I'll guarantee that it's printed at at least 240 dpi. I hope this helps...it really isn't easy to understand for folks who don't really need to understand it. I have a hard time explaining it to my customers who just don't understand that we can't use a picture off of their website that is only 72 dpi and only 2 inches by 3 inches in size. How do you make them understand that we can use it, but it will print at less than the size of a postage stamp? All the layman needs to remember is this...when rendering to screen resolutions (72 dpi) render as large as possible if you want a decent sized printed copy because it will get smaller. And Arcady is exactly right...it will take you forever to render at those dimensions in Vue; you will have to do it in stages. A sad but true fact in 3D unfortunately, unless you own an SGI workstation. :) Laurie

Okay....my explanation was specific to inkjet because it is good for learning the concepts. Like I said, it is dependent on the printing process you use. Since only one print was made, I'm assuming it was probably done on a colour laser printer. The key question is: what is the lines-per-inch for the halftoning scheme used on the printer (which would probably output not to dissimilar to a 4 colour press system since the colour is applied as 4 separate layers). They key point in what you said is that your magazine uses a camera process (which is an analog process, then, when it comes to printing, the concept of halftoning for printing can be loosely considered digital, this type of a conversion always requires extra compensation for loss of information - I'm talking in a very general and philosophical sense here). For a direct digital printout, I guarantee you that 200 ppi will not produce any visible pixelation at a reasonable viewing distance (i.e. >5 cm). The halftoning scheme will always be dominant for visual impression. Funny, a similar discussion is going on in the Adobe Photoshop User to User forum (although, related to image quality, not print quality). Anyway, people might be interested in this article: http://www.ethervizion.com/post/print.pdf (hope it's not illegal for me to repost this on my own site) It refers to scanning, but applies to renders. I'm sure this discussion will continue as it always does everytime I run into it.... -Karl

oh yeah, forgot to also mention that viewing images on your monitor is of course only approximately around 72 dpi. Depends on your resolution and monitor size. I calculate my setup to be roughly 89 dpi. -Karl

Do you know what your "printer" use for printing or the process your artwork was printed. You did mentioned "good quality". Bill

Just noticed in your post that you didn't actually say what size of paper the image was printed on (i.e. we don't know what ppi your image was printed at). Since the file default is 72 dpi, Photoshop will just tell you a size by taking the pixel dimensions/72. Also, you say you see pixelation on textures. Are these mapped textures and is the pixelation "in" the image or on the print out? The higher resolution you render, at a higher mapped image resolution is required. -karl

oyyy....i should be more clear....i mean, what was the physical dimensions of the final printout (not necessarily the size of the paper).

The final print size was around 14 x 10 inches, which is what the print size in Photoshop said. Man, this is all pretty confusing stuff. I'm not sure of the printing process the place uses, but he did mention the word "press", and it is a really high quality image and paper. The actual image that you look at on screen is flawless in terms of pixelization, it's all in the print. Unfortunately, it sounds as if I'm going to have a hard (or long) time getting the image the quality I want it. Oh yeah, how do I partially render an image, stop it, save, and then continue rendering it later? I wasn't aware you could do that in Vue. Let me ask another question. Say I open my file in Vue, and go to the rendering options menu. Then I choose the size, and I choose A4, and then I choose the highest pixels x pixles listed under the size, which is 1600x1131, will this produce a good enough image to print? By good enough, I mean I want very, very little obvious pixels poking out. I'll ring the printers tomorrow and ask 'em what dpi they're printing at, and I'll let you know. Dang, I thought this was gonna be easy!! Thanks a heap for the info, guys.

One more question...how many copy/copies did you ask him to print? I will fill you in once I have the necessary input from you. About asking the printer...don't ask them that. It does not determine anything for you as your original file is already 72 dpi. Printer talk lpi (line per inch) and if you are printing just one or twenty copies, they can use and injet or colorlaser. But you did mentioned "Press"....this indicate that color separation for press printing is involve. Thats what I need to know. Just ask them how did they printed your image...did they load into a PC/Mac and do direct casting, did a color sep or what (normally don't if its only a few copies). From what I understand so far, Karlm is right about your original file at 72dpi is too low and for the size you wanted to print at 14x10 inches, its too large for 72dpi and things start to get pixlated, blur and blocky. For press, resample your image file at 300 dpi (equalivent to 150 lpi (line per inch) )which is more then sufficient. After resampling, you may need to do some sharping etc...as this are "interpolated" product and not the original resolution. If the printer is just using a inkjet with capability of say, up to 720dpi or 1440 dpi, it makes no difference for you output, that's if your image is 300 dpi, its 300 dpi you get from a 720 or 1440 dpi printer. Also keep in mind that if you want to print a big image, you have to plan from scratch what resolution to use. Bill

actually 16 dpi is equalivant to 1 lpi if you want all 256 tone levels present. http://art.sdsu.edu/courses/art240/lessons/raster%20graphics/scanning/scan.htm http://www.google.com/search?q=print+rule+of+16+lpi+halftone&hl=en&safe=off http://www.renderosity.com/messages.ez?ForumID=12356&Form.ShowMessage=151511&Reply=151618#8 You want a 'pixels per inch' resolution of the printer's lpi times 1.5 . The printer's dpi (dots per inch) will be 16 times it's lpi for optimum performance. A home inkjet obvioulsy lacks that level of dpi. So it fakes a higher lpi by sacrificing what it hopes to be non visible transitions and non visible losses in lpi. Done through a series of algorythms which your printer manufacturer will try and market to you as 'True Color' or 'PhotoReal' or whatever other snappy name they come up with for it.

Here's some more info... The printer they use is an "Indigo EPrint", and it utilizes a 4 colour pass to print with. The fella I spoke to said that I'd want 200 pixels per inch for a pretty good print quality with little pixelization. One more thing I'm not quite getting here though... I just re-rendered the image that I had printed, but I rendered it as an A4, with pixel dimensions being 1600x1131. When I open the picture in Photoshop though, it tells me the image print size is 22 inches wide! Isn't that just a way bit too big for A4? And it still lists the pixels per inch as being at 72. What do I have to do to increase the rez then? Go to the image size menu, make it so the image is at A4 size, (shrink it), and then increase the dpi by an equal amount?!?! Arrrghhh!! My brain is hurting!!!!!!!!! Please!

Aha...... I just did some playing, and here's what I've got. The image I just rendered at 1600x1131 only equals to about 136.797 pixels per inch when I shrink it down to A4 size, which is 210mm by 297mm. So, I'm guessing I'd have to render the image to at least 3200x2262, right? But probably higher... I'm pretty sure I won't be using the Ultra render setting...

okay, so A4 is 210mm x 297mm ~ 8.27" x 11.7". So, for 200ppi, dimensions need to be 200x8.27=1654 by 200x11.7=2340. so landscape, 2340x1654, or close to that depending on what aspect ratio you use. If you're going to spend the money on a good print, why not spend the extra time for an Ultra Render (unless you run out of memory which happened a lot to me on my old computer when rendering Ultra at 3600x2700). Anyway, don't worry about opening the image and seeing 72 ppi on some huge page size. 72 ppi is just the default when no ppi information has actually been stored in the image file and given the dimensions you rendered at (1600x1131), it will calculate what the page size will be. If you go in to Photoshop, go to image>image size, make sure "resample" is NOT checked, then change your print size. You'll see it will automatically calculate what the ppi will be. Or, you can change the ppi and it will automatically calculate what the print size has to be to get this dpi. Just remember, it's not changing the image (it's fixed at 1600x1131 pixels), it's just adding information on how it will be printed. If it knows the print size, it can calculate the dpi, if it knows the dpi, it can calculate the print size. It's three pieces of info (pixel dimension, print size, and dpi) and any two can calculate the third. Also note that it's only information for you and does not need to be set since the printer will adjust the print size to the size that you request and you will get the corresponding ppi. -karl

Well TinMan, I guess Karlm got it all in order :) Bill

Thanks, finally got my brain's new information on all this stuff sorted. Thanks a lot guys!! Oop... one more thing. How do I render an image, then save the render halfway through, and then load the render up later and resume it? The manual has got nothing in it at all about doing that. Nothing in the rendering section anyways... Once again, thanks people!

I think Arcady mentioned this. I never done it before either. Next please... :) Bill

Well, I've actually had problems resuming rendering after shutting down the program. Here's the rundown from my experience: 1. If you keep the program running, you can just stop rendering, and then from the menu choose resume render...no problem. 2. If you want to turn your computer off or shut down the program: a: If you were rendering to disk, it has been my experience that as long as the vue file is saved in the landscape directory and the image file is being rendered to the picture directory you should be able to resume render by just starting the program opening your file and choose resume render. b: If you are rendering to screen, if you stop the render, save the partial render to the picture directory, and make sure your file is saved in the landscape directory. Later, start the program, open file, and resume your render. From my experience, problem arises when the files are not stored in the default directories (both the vue and image file) - the resume option is not available. -Karl

Very interesting Karl and thanks for sharing your experience. Is this documented in Vue manual somewhere. TinMan said there was none. I am just wondering if e-on knows about this that Vue can do (Bryce does) otherwise, why sure a useful procedure is not documented. Bill