Hello,
I have a question regarding print quality;
I'm working on a project for a gallery (here in the UK) which
involves producing composite images. The composites are made from
images of school kids photographed against a plain backdrop, which
are then cut out (in photoshop) and placed into a 'scene', to form a
series of tableaux.
All the images (backgrounds and school kids) are shot in RAW on my
Nikon D700. The gallery want to print the final composite images at
a size of 1600mm on their longest edge, so we have taken a couple of
A3 cropped sections from an image which I sized at those dimensions
to see how they will look.
The main problem is that there is (obviously, I guess) a disparity
between the background 'scene' image, and the 'composite element'
images (the cut out school kids) in terms of image quality...the
school kids look OK but the background scene image looks grainy.
Whilst the final images were always meant to be presented as
composite tableaux (it was never intended that they look like 'real
life' scenes) the
difference in the image quality (between
image components and background) seems too great. Obviously I
understand that the background scene is being blown up way bigger
than each cut-out element of the image, and so is bound to look more
grainy, but wondered if there was a way to print a RAW file at that
size without so much loss of quality...? How big can a RAW file go
before it starts to break up? I've been told that I should be able
to print a Billboard sized image from a RAW file, but I suspect that
is a different kind of printing technology to that of printing a
digital
photograph... If I can print the background image
without too much loss of quality then the composite elements will
sit better within the scene...at the moment they stand out a mile
because they are very clear/non-grainy by comparison.
Any advice on this gratefully received.
Cheers,
Jonathan.
