Got brave enough this month to submit one for the monthly competition at my new camera club. Half of the competitions are digital, and half are print. Sept and Oct are print. I didn't submit one for Sept because I wanted to sit in on a competition first to see how they ran. If it had just been a digital competition, I would have gone ahead and entered, but print just scares the living daylights out of me. AND, if you enter in the Nature category, there can be NO HAND OF MAN, nor can you remove any elements (like that darn bokeh right in the top middle). The only thing you can do to the content of the photo is crop. UGH!!!! Too much pressure!!! In all the years I've been shooting digital, I have only had one set of photos printed, and they didn't look nearly as good on paper as they did on the screen! So I haven't had any printed since! But I've studied up some, and hopefully the print version of this little guy will turn out well. I ordered from ProDPI and ordered the Fuji Lustre paper, and ran a different sharpening process on the file I submitted for print. I also had to crop it differently because my matting will have an 11x14 viewing area, but the photo needs to go under the matting with no background mat board showing thru, so I cropped the printed version to 12x16 and estimated where this guy should be so that he shows well at 11x14. WAY out of my comfort zone here!!!! Hopefully the print will look good, and HOPEFULLY it will arrive in time for the competition next Wednesday!!!
And of course, on here, the quality is always somewhat diminished....
I have said that when you print a digital you no longer have the benefit of the light coming through the picture. I believe it makes a huge difference and you have to consider it when printing. Voice of experience. The size of the print matters two because the bigger the more pixaleated it gets and seems more noticeable in print. But if you do not get a descent print of these then you are using the wrong company.
@joansmor Looks like resolution was only 240 rather than the 300 I'm pretty sure I typed in! And the resample (Photoshop) was set to Bicubic Smoother...
@shesnapped 300 is best but I think I have heart 240 is good, Most online companies will warn you if too pixelated for size you want to print and you have too override the warning, I used Persnickety Prints when I printed for the fairs I entered. Who did you use?
Not familiar with but I looked at the site and it looked professional. Bet they have the override feature. I usually run into this when I have greatlt cropped a picture.