Sharing some artwork

[Samuel Tow]

I'm still mulling this over. Alex is too polite to admit it but I pretty much abused his patience so I don't want to bother him with what is, frankly, going to turn out to be a pain in the ass. A roughly 4000x4000 uncompressed image - and two of them - are not easy to transfer over the 'net. I also actually tried printing the JPGs once already. My father has a large office printer and a colour toner her apparently doesn't mind wasting so much, and we did actually quite a few prints of the two JPGs I had, both on regular paper and on a stack of photo-quality paper he apparently had lying about. I actually end up seeing the printer's pixellation - and that's a 600DPI machine - before I see the JPG artefacts, and that's with me basically rubbing my face on the paper.

Trouble is, the colours are very muted and much darker an I don't know that a printer built for an office is a good substitute for that. There are a few "photo shops" around town that I could ask around in, but I doubt they have actual photographers working at them. Even back in the days of physical film, the girls at the counter just took your canisters and sent them to be developed, and these days they just snap, print and cut. I doubt many of them know much more about image quality than I do. You guys have been invaluable :)

Basically, I want to exhaust all my options locally before I bug Alex again. The pics he sent me are quite good quality. They do show some JPG artefacts, but one's 5792x5100 and the other's 4952x6320. If it doesn't end up too expensive, I might just have to go ahead and have one printed out to see if I can't see any artefacts, basically as a test run, but your concerns about quality are well justified. One way or another, this has to happen, though. I want physical media of those two :)

[Bliz]

The muted/dark colors on the print could be because they don't have a color profile or have an inferior one. It could also be they are a different color profile or calibration from your monitor. And some printers just print either too light or dark before adjustment.

I would google for local print places (not photo developer labs) and make a few calls and ask what their assorted rates and services are. A print shop will have the software needed to do the color/contrast corrections you need on your pieces. A local printer would be willing to make a few test runs for you on cheap paper so can get the look you want, and charge you little to none for them knowing you want to get a high quality print or two from them. (Plus, supporting local business, yay.)

If you take the images on thumbdrive (I have even taken images in on my phone and used a usb to usb cable to connect to their computer), they would probably also be willing to save your files with their corrections in TIF format so you at least have somewhat better files to work with in the future. Mind you, any flaws that are there will remain but the files will not degrade further.)

[Samuel Tow]

Oh, local businesses don't have web pages or call numbers. You basically have to know it exists and walk in to ask questions, and many either don't know or wouldn't bother with too much in terms of detail. But yes, I'm thinking the printer I used just printed too dark. That's been a running problem in our office, as both large machines just print much darker than what's on your screen. We don't print colour often, but when we do, it never matches the monitor. I know there are colour calibration issues, but all of our monitors match each other, it's the printer that's errant.

I'll let you know when I find anything out.

[Imagesbyalex]

Well the Thirteen file is 5792x5100 so if you uploaded it to Imagekind, they could do a 36x48 print, they suggest 6000 for 44x60: http://www.imagekind.com/printing.aspx

The file is 19x17 at 300dpi, so that size or smaller would look fine, you could probably go bigger but probably not more than 1/2 up like Liz said, but the blurriness might take a really really close up viewing, and most posters should be viewed further then a few inches away...I do drive museum guards nuts because I like to get almost within licking distance to some paintings, but that's totally another discussion. 

I've used Imagekind and they are pretty good, I've also done prints with Deviant. I'd like to hear what others have used and had good results with.

While jpeg is lossy, unless you're editing and then saving the file again, you shouldn't have any loss. I save the jpeg from the photoshop file once, if I made any changes, it would always be in the original file, and  I would save a new jpeg. I always wondered if any artists would actually edit jpegs and then resave them(unless they didn't have the original, but since I made the pic in the first place, I guess hard drive crashes...but then I would do the image again vs using a jpeg....)

If you do get a cool print, I would love to see a photo of it on your wall, you can even stand next to it!

https://i98.photobucket.com/albums/l259/g3macboy/city%20of%20heroes/my_poster_zpsbd0a10c8.jpg

Got that one from Deviant, pretty sure I uploaded a jpeg, and Liz is even in it!

[Samuel Tow]

Sorry I didn't respond for so long, guys. Finding a place to print this for me has been a pain in the ass, but I did score a pretty good business. Sadly, the largest they did was A4, more or less, so I couldn't blow this up to a poster, but I did get a couple of very nice desktop images that I'm going to showcase in my home. I even made a photo of them!

https://images.weserv.nl/?url=img585.imageshack.us%2Fimg585%2F7407%2Fgalleryyg.jpg

I'm not in the photo, however. So maybe I'm a bit camera shy :) I also apologise for the image quality, it's the best my phone could do without an SD card (long story) and with my unsteady hands. This is basically the only shot out of a dozen that wasn't either blurry or off to the side, so I went with it.

I chose desktop frames instead of wall-mounted because I don't feel comfortable hammering nails into my wall. It's all brick on the other side and the last time I tried it I chipped a large chunk out of the paint. Besides, I couldn't get those printed large enough to mount to the wall - they just don't offer large prints where I live, or at the very least don't do so for a reasonable price. I've seen my colleagues print out whole posters, but I'm not confident in the image quality and I don't actually have room in the house for large posters. There are very few bare walls. Hell, I barely made shelf space :) I need to disassemble the Millennium Falcon and the Galactic Enforcer to make some more. They're gathering too much dust to leave them assembled for as long as I have. But, yeah, most of the room I'm likely to put anything in is either floor-to-ceiling bookcase, window or light switches and lamps.

In either case, though, thank you kindly, Alex! :) I spent half an hour... Probably closer to 45 minutes at the photo studio while the guy there worked on this, and the artwork was turning heads left and right. Everyone that came in after we got one framed and upright stopped to look at it like I'd parked a million dollar Ferrari outside (I don't actually own one of those), it was awesome. Few people commented as people here are generally not inclined to do so, but everyone was stopping to check it out. Makes me proud to own it! :)

Again, thank you kindly.

*edit*
I'll probably get better frames for them in time. That ought to be the easier part.