One question I often receive from fine art photographers is “How Big Can I Print?”. As you might expect, the answer to that question is rather complicated. Factors such as the type of printer, the quality and size of the file, the subject matter of the photograph, the anticipated viewing distance of the finished print, photographer and/or client preferences, and other factors all can come into play in determining acceptable and optimal printing sizes.
Subject matter is one of the more important factors in determining how big you can print. Images, like the one below, that rely on intricate detail are more difficult to enlarge and thus have smaller acceptable print sizes.
Images such as the next one that do not rely as heavily on detail and instead rely more on color, shape, or other aspects of design can often be successfully enlarged to a greater degree, allowing larger acceptable print sizes.
For most subject matter, however, the size of your file from your digital camera or film scan will tell you how big you can print. A standard measure of the amount of enlargement of file is the dots per inch (dpi) sent to the printer (the print resolution). The dots in this case refer to pixels in the original image. If, for example, you have a typical 6 Megapixel camera, your images will be somewhere near 3000 pixels in one dimension (e.g., height) and 2000 pixels in the other (e.g., width). If you wanted to print at 300 dpi, for example, this would result in an image that is approximately 10 inches x 6.7 inches. You can calculate this number for your files simply by dividing the number of pixels by 300.
From my experience, I believe that a print resolution of 240 dpi or higher will unquestionably produce fine art prints that survive close inspection. So, you can modify the formula above and divide the number of pixels in each direction by 240 instead of 300. For the 6 Megapixel camera mentioned above, that means you can easily produce quality, fine art images of 12.5 inches x 8.3 inches or smaller. For a higher resolution 10 Megapixel camera (with about 3870 pixels x 2600 pixels), you can easily produce fine art images of 16 inches x 11 inches or smaller. If you want the highest quality, I would suggest 300 dpi or 360 dpi, but higher resolutions than 360 dpi usually don’t provide improvement visible to the naked eye.
Of course, many images and situations will prove to be exceptions to this rule of thumb, but image size is a good indicator of acceptable print sizes. If the viewing distance for your final print is a few feet or more away (which often happens with larger prints), you can certainly push the print size up as the increased distance will help hide any problems in the print. A 240 dpi or above standard will allow closer inspection of the print, a desirable attribute for many fine art photographers who expect their work to be viewed closely or held in the hand.
Despite these rules of thumb, sometimes it makes sense just to print your image at the size you want and see how it looks. I’ve been surprised many times at how good prints can look even when the original image was “too small”. Experimentation with your own work and printing solution will help you decide what print sizes work best for you.
