Don’t know if this is the proper category, but closest I could find.
Does anyone have any tips/best practices on printing their artwork out for hanging on walls, for example?
I have an image I want to print to put in my young son’s room (simple balloons image based on BlenderCookie tutorial).
Is it just printing on photo paper? I want it to be well saturated and accurate, of course, etc.
Thanks for any tips!
You should be fine on photo paper, but one thing that people forget is the resolution. On your screen things are rendered at 72dpi but the recommended minimum for print would be 200dpi, usually this creates a large image and it isn’t as simple as putting it into a graphics program like photoshop, or GIMP and upping the resolution, since it has no way of telling what information is missing. Using some math, or software you can figure the dimensions of getting a good render for print.
An 8.5" X 11" print would be rendered at 1700 x 2200 minimum.
Saturation and color should not be a problem, since Blender usually puts out gamma corrected images, so what you see is what will usually print.
Good point on the resolution. I did think of that issue and did a conversion from inches to pixels and rendered at that size (actually did 300dpi for an 8 x 10 image – luckily the scene is not complicated at all).
Thanks for the help!
For most desktop inkjet printing, even on high quality photo paper, 200dpi is plenty, and many commercial banner-printing shops use 100-150dpi with good results. I’ve printed approx. 20"x30" on a high-end Epsom at only 100 dpi & it had excellent visual quality. Nowadays file size isn’t quite as critical as when Gb HDs were not that common, but still it’s good to conserve if possible.