I watched the Luminous Landscape "From Camera to Print" video, and they took a different approach to resizing and printing. I've been using their method, and I've been getting really good fine art prints.
To print, they never resample the image, as long as there is enough resolution to start with. For a big poster, they might even go as low as 130 ppi, but they commonly go as low as 180 ppi for large prints. In the resize dialog, they change the size in inches, but leave the "resample image" checkbox unchecked. After resizing, they sharpen for printing using Photokit Sharpener's output sharpening. Then they let the print driver handle the resampling. They claim the print driver can do the resampling better than PS can.
For uprezing, they claim the best way is to use the resize dialog in PS, and either double or quadruple the size, using Bicubic Smoother. Then, add some noise back into the image. They use Photokit Sharpener to add the noise back in. To print the resized image, they use the same method as above.
I've used this method to double the size of my image, and gotten really good results. I've never tried it to quadruple the size.
In the video, they use CS3 and Photokit Sharpener. It's my understanding that many of the features of Photokit Sharpener were included in CS4, but I don't have CS4, so I can't verify. |
