Any hope? poster size enlargement

[don0234]

I shot my one of my son's High School football games this season at the Berry Center and came out with a lot of great pics. I made cd's and gave them to the Coaching staff. The Staff loved the pictures.

Now here is my problem-they called this morning and asked if I could make 10-15 of the pictures into posters? They want them to put up in the workout and Training areas.

I shot this game at 1600 ISO (Canon 20d RAW). The pictures make great 8x10's. I had tried earlier to make 16x24 prints and they were grainy. I have CS3(not a lot of time using it yet) but no noise reduction software. Would noise reduction software help when making enlargements?

I would love to be able to do this for the team.

Any Advise?

Thanks for all the great help that always follows when I ask for help on this Forum.

Don

Example picture-

http://www.texasphotoforum.com/galle...hp?photo=22373

[janetg]

why not make a poster to the size they want..and then put the 8x10's ON the poster as 8x10's?

[don0234]

Thats an idea to fall back on.

I think the enlargement can be made but need help in figuring out the way to do it.

The first time I tried was close to looking good and that was when I was was using Elemets3.

My hope is a Photoshop Guru might give me some tips on what to do and not to do.

Thanks,
Don

[kenw]

run the noise reduction s/w, then look at www.perfectposters.com. they print inkjet at large sizes (i use them a lot) for very good prices. when you upload, they will tell you immediately how big they will go and the $$ (~$25? each)

[don0234]

Thanks Ken.

I just looked at thier website sounds good.

What size file would you send for a 24x36 print?

[CaptainTom]

Go to this web site. read their recommendations re: don't try to upsize the file on your own. Let them upsize your image.
Just make sure the file you send is in the relationship of the poster you are buying.

http://www.elcocolor.com/poster_special.htm

I've used this company countless times and have never been dissapointed.
I sent one file to them and they called me to say they didn't think it was going to make a good print. seems that I had sent one I had resized for TPF instead of the hi res version.

[don0234]

Thank you.

I am going to try both of the mentioned companies.

Could you hazard a guess-do you think a sharp 8x10 300ppi shot will work at 24x30 well?

What is thier turn around time?

[CaptainTom]

Originally Posted by don0234

Thank you.

I am going to try both of the mentioned companies.

Could you hazard a guess-do you think a sharp 8x10 300ppi shot will work at 24x30 well?

What is thier turn around time?

Yes.
8X10 = 24X30 if the original is 300 ppi it will be great.

El CO turn around is a couple of days, and they keep you updated with e-mails.

[don0234]

Sweet.
I now need to do some processing.

Thank you!

[dbphotos]

Originally Posted by don0234

Thank you.

I am going to try both of the mentioned companies.

Could you hazard a guess-do you think a sharp 8x10 300ppi shot will work at 24x30 well?

What is thier turn around time?

Here's their requirements/recommendations for files sizes, etc.

http://www.elcocolor.com/posterfaq/index.asp

If you are shooting in RAW you should always have plenty of file size to print a poster and like Tom said, always let the printer upsize the image. They pay thousands of dollars for software that does it better than we can.

Let us know how they turn out.

[don0234]

I went from being dis-appointed yesterday morning to anxious to start this project rolling.

It's going to be a long night here at work!!

Thank you all!

Don

[MattMoore]

if the noise sw doesn't work, you could "artsy" with them, go B&W and purposely add grain

[don0234]

I did that once for them. it hangs in the head Coaches office.

Well after all I went through and all your help out there they went with another photographer to do the enlargments.

Thanks for all the help. I learned a lot and bought a copy of Noiseware.

Any tips on using the Noiseware?

I tried it out today and it cleaned up some Volleyball pix better than I ever thought was possible. I could be dangerous with it if I knew what I was doing!

Thank everyone for the help,

Don

[don0234]

Follow up-
After I agreed verbally to let another photographer make enlagements of my prints (at the time of the request I had no idea what to do or how to do large prints) for the school I finally went out to see what they looked like.
In month and a half between me passing on this chance and now I have come up to speed on making 24x30 prints. In fact I have sold quite a few. ElcoColor however has a two print minimum. So I had printed some posters for the High School from a file I knew they did not have. A little suprise for the Coaches.

I must admit that when I saw my pictures hanging on the wall in the weight training room it felt pretty good. The quality of the 16x20" photos were fair but good enough for where they were hanging.

I met up with one of the Coaches who is also a friend who I had worked football with years ago. We walked around and discussed how the pictures looked. After that we went into the office and I handed him the 24x30 posters that ElcoColor printed.
His jaw dropped! They looked great and made the ones on the wall look not so great. I am not bad mouthing another Photographer here-I shot all the pictures in question. Noise reduction + sharpening and ElcoColor prints make a big difference.

Now I am going to question another photograhers thought process-
It turns out that the guy charged the Coaches $500 to print 10 16x20 medium quality prints. Eight of the ten of the shots were taken by me! Only 2 were his.
I was told that there was alot of horse trading to get to that point. What makes me question the whole point of charging them is-it's a great trade for field time and advertising.
I had a spike of traffic and sales on my website on an album that sold well back in November. The profits from this extra exposure would have covered these prints and how about the ability to shoot at the Berry Center here in Cypress? That is not an easy feat. Someone from the team has to vouch for you and get you a pass. The venue is awesome.

I am not complaining that this guy made a little money off my prints. I may want to thank him for being such a good businessman making a dollar wherever he can.
Things worked out well for me. More people now know who I am + I met the Boys and Girls Soccer Coaches who asked me to come out to the Berry Center and Shoot thier games.
I doubt they will be asking him to the Berry Center any time soon.
Needless to say that I was also asked to travel with the Varsity Football team on the condition that I would stay with them long term.

I know that I have read many times here in the TPF "do not give your work away". I do not consider this as giving away work I see it as a trade. My football work is on public display with orders coming in from that exposure.

I would also like to thank the many of you that have helped me along with my education here.
I knew nothing on how to use noise reduction-where to make large quality prints-little tricks in Raw and how to sharpen. The list goes on and on.

I can now take a good photo to the next level.

Thank you all.

Don

[HutchPhoto]

Don Outstanding thead and the process road you went down.!

Thanks for reporting back! as for the other photog... BoooooYaaaaaaaa


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