Hi Frank,

What is the maximum size of print you anticipate producing? That would probably govern the size of file you create and save, while the format itself should be a lossless one such as TIF or PSD. TIF is more universal, so if you don't have any Photoshop-specific data that needs to be retained in your edited images (assuming some edits are still needed to obtain faithful reproduction of your paintings), then I think TIF would be the favored format. You may find a 6.1Mpx camera insufficient for your goal, especially if it happens to be a "digicam" as oppposed to a digital SLR, the latter having a larger sensor that typically yields images with less noise and which therefore tend to resample more cleanly to larger sizes.

Also, do you have any idea as to what specific print media you would be using and what minimum image resolution is recommended for it? For example, fine-textured or glossy media might do best with an image at 300ppi, but media of a more coarse texture might not require more than 240ppi. Another factor may well be the printer itself, if an Iris or other such fine-art Giclee printer. And your art itself, if not finely detailed, may also reduce the demands on what maximum image resolution is needed.

Keep in mind also that a 6.1Mpx image...let's call it 2000x3000 pixels...will have to be upsampled considerably if you are producing prints of much size. At 300ppi unsampled, you're looking at 6.67x10 inches. I don't know how much you can push the limits of resampling an image of that size and still produce art-quality prints, but I'm thinking perhaps no more than 20x30 inches, if that. Hopefully someone here has experience in producing such prints from that size of original image and can provide you better advice.

I have never done any Giclee printing, unless you simply want to call that a fancy word for modern inkjet printing, but I have made nice 12x18-inch productions of my sister's paintings using my Epson R1800 and Epson Velvet Fine Art paper. She commented that without the original painting adjacent the print to compare it to, she thought the colors were faithful to the original. I found that quite true, with some colors visually identical to my eye alhough others shifted in hue but still pleasing. Of course, the flat surface of the matte finish could not quite capture the texture of acrylic on canvas paintings, but there was some sense of that which again was still pleasing to her.

In the case of these photo-reproductions that I made, I was shooting with a 10Mpx camera and the artwork was originally 24x36 inches in size. The image I was printing from was 12x18 inches @ 300ppi (58MB file size), ressampled using PS CS2's Image Size dialog (as opposed to any 3rd-party approach).

Regards,

Daryl

francis_colaguori

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