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Printing Photos - The Details

Printing of photos always seemed to me a large, mysterious realm to be explored in a distant future. Now, this distant future has arrived and I have spent some time and money in order to learn and test printing of my photos.

Last changed on 2024-03-28

Sizes & Formats

I looked at different print formats using a resolution of 300dpi and compared it with my camera file size output. It turns out that if the original shot is not cropped, I could print up to 12R/S12R with 300dpi.

Format Code 4R 6R 8R 10R 12R
Height “ 4 6 8 10 12
Width “ 6 8 10 12 15
Height px 1200 1800 2400 3000 3600
Width px 1800 2400 3000 3600 4500
Megapixels 2.2 4.3 7.2 10.8 16.2
Ratio 2:3 3:4 4:5 5:6 4:5
Format Code 4R S8R S10R S12R D500
Height “ 4 8 10 12 12.37
Width “ 6 12 15 18 18.56
Height px 1200 2400 3000 3600 3712
Width px 1800 3600 4500 5400 5568
Megapixels 2.2 8.6 13.5 19.4 20.7
Ratio 2:3 2:3 2:3 2:3 2:3

At this size 300dpi is overkill. I printed a few shots in S12R and at about 150dpi still looks good. What if I want to print even larger?

Below inches vs pixels for 24″x36″, with ratio 2:3, may preferred. 110dpi may be a the lowest resolution for this format, allowing me to crop to 2/3 of the original image size.

dpi 60 110 150 180 220 300
Height “ 24 24 24 24 24 24
Width “ 36 36 36 36 36 36
Height px 1440 2640 3600 4320 5280 7200
Width px 2160 3960 5400 6480 7920 10800
Megapixels 3.1 10.5 19.4 28.0 41.8 77.8
Ratio 2:3 2:3 2:3 2:3 2:3 2:3

Out of curiosity, I also looked into file sizes for optimal display on iMac and MacBook Pro.

Screens 13″ 15″ 21.5″ 27″
dpi 227 227 220 220
Height “ 7.05 7.93 10.47 13.09
Width “ 11.28 12.69 18.62 23.27
Height px 1600 1800 2304 2880
Width px 2560 2880 4096 5120
Megapixels 4.1 5.2 9.4 14.7
Ratio 10:16 10:16 9:16 9:16

If compared with the D500 file size, i am able to create files for optimal display even on full size iMac 27″ as long as I don’t crop the photo.

Cost for Print and Frame

Printing is not that expensive. Nevertheless, I cannot afford to print every photo: 12″x18″: 20 CAD; 24″x36″ CAD: 30 CAD.

With fram, printing gets more expensive. I prefer canvas print so that the print is mounted permanently and without having to decide which frame color matches the photo. 12″x18″: 100 CAD; No data for the larger size yet.

Preparing to Print in Affinity Photo

When preparing a photo for print, I start having creating a new document with the dimensions of the final print and the dpi required. I then copy paste the previously prepared photo into the new document and adjust size to fit the document dimensions. If the resolution of the photo is too low, it would have to increase size of the photo. I learned about this approach watching Affinity Photo tutorial videos.

Q&A

References