We are often asked by clients just how big we think they should go with a print and whether there is such a thing as “too big”. Well, we just had a client order a 30′x40′ metallic print for his new wife as a Valentine’s Day gift – that’s about 4x larger than life-size – and she loves it! He chose a 5″ black piano-lacquer frame with a 2″pewter-gild inner frame and it is dramatic as all get out. Now that the gift has been delivered and we can talk about it, and we thought it would be an excellent jumping-off point to talk about print size.

First, the image (you are the New Hotness, Chris!):

…and then the print (still in plastic pending pickup by framer):

90 lb hangdog* included for scale (and she’s not happy about it, either).

Big prints like this are simply GORGEOUS and they just demand attention. You cannot make a stronger statement than a single strong image writ BIG. This print will not simply be a photo, it will “hold the wall”. It will help to define the room in that same way a piece of furniture does, which brings me to my first point about print size…

1. Context
The appropriate print size is really dictated by the space in which it will be presented rather than any hard and fast rules or convention. For example, a 16×20 print strikes many people as overwhelmingly large when they are holding it in their hands – but framed it is actually the perfect size for a bathroom, as an example. Put that same print on a 12′ x 20′ wall however, and it simply disappears – it loses its impact. So the real question isn’t “how big is too big?”, but rather “what does the space require?”

2. Content
Another consideration is the content of the image. This may sound counterintuitive to many people but the psychology of visual perception actually suggests that the simpler and stronger the image, the larger it should be printed. For example, this shot of Chris that we’re discussing is what we would describe in the studio as really quite ‘graphical’, meaning that the subject is well-defined (single person; no background distractions), abstracted (only parts of the subject are shown; its been toned blue), and has ’strong lines’ (which would take a while to explain, but means basically that the elements of the image are composed and weighted in the frame in a way that is compelling in and of itself). These are all characteristics which appear in painting and particularly the graphic arts (hence the ‘graphical’ description) and they all contribute to an overriding characteristic that their design is visually interesting over and above any consideration of what the image content is. Such images work on multiple levels over different viewing distances: across the room their color, shape and composition are the primary interest, while the image content increasingly becomes the focus as the viewer moves closer. In fact what I’ve just described is one of the principle qualities that makes an image a work of art as opposed to a visual document. Such images are excellent candidates for very large prints and should be treated just as you would a painting or lithograph, with the general rule of thumb that less (fewer) is more, and bigger is better.

As a counter-example, a photo that is largely documentary, say a group photo of your family, while it may have great personal significance to you, will probably not be visually compelling on a level other than what’s going on in the photo. A print of your family can look great as a 24″x 30″ over your fire place, but probably won’t be any more impactful at 3′x 6′ – just bigger. Its never going to be ‘art’, in other words, at least not in the sense that I’ve just defined it. For such ’straightforward’ shots that are really mostly about what’s ‘in’ them, it may be preferable to have 10 different 11 x 14’s than a single large image.

How to Tell – An Excercise
All of the images that appear on our website’s landing page are good candidates for large prints so you might use those as a reference point. But here’s one way that can help you make a decision. Take a small print of the image in question (5×7, say) and put it at arm’s length. Now sort of squint at it so that the details of the image become a little indistinct. Is what you see a well-patterned or defined set of lines, shadows, geometry and/or colors, or is it sort of a blob without any form? If the former, its probably a strong image, visually speaking. If the latter, its probably better suited for an album or smaller wall-print.

3. Resolution
Particularly in the early days of digital photography, print size was often limited by the relatively low image resolution that the cameras of the day produced and this was in fact the sole advantage that film had over digital for many years. Not so today. The digital vs. film wars are over and digital won. Film still has an absolute resolution advantage over digital, but that gap has narrowed considerably, and recent advances in post-production technology has really lessened the practical usefulness of that advantage in any event. We use equipment with resolutions between 8-12 megapixels. Additionally, for very large prints, we utilize new advances in mathematical interpolation that really allow for prints of unlimited size without introducing the pixelation and artifacts that plagued early digital enlargements.

For the record, we’ve produced 1 full-size billboard, a bus-wrap, a handful of mini (10′) billboards, dozens of 6′ satin banners, several life-sized stretched-canvas gallery wraps, and of course many, many large mounted prints like the one of Chris here – all with images from our equipment. They all looked fantastic.

– Mitch

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 8:27 pm and is filed under News & Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.