Forgive me if this is a silly question, but... I noticed one of the contests currently available requires a high-resolution (300dpi/4200x5100 min resolution) render to enter. Presumably this is so a print of the piece can be made eventually. I don't have any experience with digital art brought into the physical medium, thus my question... Now, I don't know if it's just my computer or if everyone has this issue, but I can't convince my P6 to DO renders that high-res. The absolute highest setting I can squelchout of it is 3000x5000(300dpi) with only one raytrace bounce, textures turned way down, and the bucket size reduced to 12. (And that's a very hopeful statement - it hasn't actually successfully COMPLETED that render yet - I'm afraid it will take days.) Does anyone else encounter this problem? If so, what have you done to circumvent it? Can I use a 3000x5000 raw Poser render and resize it in Photoshop to the requirement without losing too much quality?

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Hmmmm. Interesting. I never tried rendering at that size before. The largest I've done with Poser 6 was 3200x2400 (96dpi). It rendered fine, but there wasn't much in the scene anyway. If you try to scale UP from the smaller rendered size, you're going to run into all kinds of resolution problems like blurring and loss of detail. I really don't know the answer for this one, but perhaps (and I mean MAYBE) you can try using the spot-render feature to get through a huge render like this piece by piece? You'd have to resort to rendering a section of the image, then another section, etc. until you have it all, then composite all the pieces carefully in an image editor. Don't know if that would actually work or not, or even if you'd be able to get through a single piece at that high a resolution, but if you really need to do it, might be worth a shot. Boy, I'm glad most of my commercial work so far has been for video, so as to avoid those massive print resolution requirements. :-( Good luck.

I guess you have to ask yourself if what you win in the contest is really worth the effort. Maybe they are intentionaly setting the standards so high as to exclude the majority of people from even trying to enter.

"Maybe they are intentionaly setting the standards so high as to exclude the majority of people from even trying to enter." Or perhaps simply to exclude only us P6 users. LOL! Seriously, can you mention who is running this contest? (Just curious).

A document of 4200x5100px will be the same digital size regardless of dpi....both will still be 4200x5100px. at 72dpi it will simply be 58"x70" printed and at 300 dpi it will be 14"x17" printed

That final size is a 14x17 inch print (@300dpi), and I have enlarged Poser renders to that size using LizardTech PrintPro that looked good when printed. PrintPro is a bit pricey for the average user but the demo gives you 15 unrestricted uses (which is enough for your use). The trick is to start with a fairly large original (web size images won't work). And to start with proportions that will enlarge exactly to the final size. For my 14x17 inch prints (4200x5100 ppi) I rendered to 10.5x12.75 inches (3150x3825 ppi), which is 75% of final size (and a much more reasonable size for Poser to handle). Save in a lossless format like. Tiff or. Psd. If you do any postwork wait until you have resized the image to do it. The final step is to sharpen (and please note, that sharpening HAS to be the very LAST thing you do). Photoshops Unsharp Mask is good and the Smart Sharpen in the new PSCS2 is even better for general work. But for sharpening an enlarged image for print I found the High Pass filter method works the best. You always lose a bit of sharpness and resolution with any resampling (up or down), but the small amount of loss using this method doesnt matter because it is offset by the greater viewing distance. Hope this helps, SWAMP

The contest is managed by MorriganShadow and shylydrya, maxxxmodelz. It's at the bottom of the front page in the contests section. Ending soon. :/ The 3000x5000px rendered all the way to the first 'square' with a foreground figure in it, and then crashed on me. Currently attempting 2010x3350 with the 'important' figure zoomed in. Hopefully that will give me enough to work with, and I can patch in the 'rest' of the sky and background with postwork. Thank you for your advice, SWAMP! I'm currently downloading - will update on how it worked once I get a usable render. -.-