On 3/22/06 5:58 PM, in article ,
"William_T" wrote:

For the first time I'm thinking of having a lab print some digital
files for me. Up till now, I've done them all myself, but now I have
some big panoramas that my printer can't handle. The requirements of
the lab have me a bit confused, however, and I'm hoping someone here
can help.

The lab states digital files must be set to the size and resolution
you want, along with any borders you want included. They say the
easiest way to do this is in Photoshop under "image size." According
to their explanation, all they do is open up the file and press
"print." I have a panorama file that was scanned at 1200 resolution
and is saved as a .tiff file of approximately 75 megabytes. I want my
photo printed at 6.3" x 21.1". Does this mean that I need to change
my image size to this setting in Photoshop for them to print it at
this size? When I do this, it changes my 75 megabyte file into a 553
megabytes giant. This seems a bit excessive, but since I've never
sent anything to a lab for printing before, maybe this is typical?

Btw, I've sent an e-mail to the lab to ask them this same question,
but I haven't heard back yet. That's the reason I'm asking it here.

When you say that your file was scanned at 1200 resolution do you mean 1200
dpi? If so, that is a very low resolution scan and may not result in very
high print quality. With the file opened in Photoshop you will want to look
in the image size dialog box and see how many pixels per inch (that is PPI
not dpi) your image contains at its current size. Then with the resample
box UNchecked change your long dimension to 21.1" and again look at how many
ppi that you have. If, at that length you have 240 ppi or better you
probably have sufficient quality to produce an acceptable print. If you are
close to but below that figure you can probably check the resample box and
insert a higher ppi number and up-sample your image. If you are quite a bit
below 240 up-sampling will not be a very satisfactory solution. As far as
file size is concerned 553 MB is not all that large for an uncompressed pano
file.
Chuck