Topic: Polaroid enlargements????

[astrobeck]

Have any of the  FW's here ever made enlargements of their Polaroid prints?
I'm curious to know what resolution you scanned them at, and what is the largest print you've made of one.

I've got a 669 color shot I'd like to make into an 8 x 10, and would like it to be nice.

thanks!

 

[artpunk]

Hey Becky, I haven't actually enlarged many of my polaroids, except to print out on my own inkjet for personal use, but I've often considered this question. The way I see it, is that if you scan in at 300 dpi at 100% on your scanner you get a scan of equal print size (at 300 dpi) of your original polaroid. At 200% you will get a print twice as big and so forth. The place that printed my toycamera pics (including Mr Percival) requested the digital files in the dimensions I want them printed at 200 dpi (so for  a 20" x 20" print that was 4000 x 4000 pixels @ 200 dpi) -  seeing the results of that kind of resolution and enlargement I think you'd probably be happy with any scan at 200 dpi and above, you just need to adjust for the actual size you want to print out eventually, whatever percantage larger than the original that you want...
As I said, I'm no expert in this besides what I've mentioned, so I'm sure other FW will have more experience with enlarging polaroids from scans...
 

[Francois]

I know there are many answers to this question. Optimal scan resolution depends a lot on printer type (ink jet, dye sub, Fuji Frontier type machines, etc.) and viewing distance.

I know I use and love Digital Light and Color's ScanCalc program. Freeware, small and efficient is the name of the game. A piece of software I highly recommend you download. They shouldn't even ship scanners without it... it's that good.

Here's the link
http://www.dl-c.com/Temp/downloads/ScanCalc/saving_running.htm

the best 532kb you'll ever have downloaded!

Try it and tell me what you think about it!

[beck]

I've wondered this myself as I like to fiddle around with the insides of Polaroids, combine them...etc. I just assumed the bigger the file/res, etc., the better the print would look. ?? Good advice...

[warren]

Bigger is always better but there's a point of personal diminshing return. A lot of the stuff I do Pola-wise I scan around 70MB, or ~5200x4500 (scanning at original size with 2400 dpi).

At 200 dpi which a lot of the larger printers default to, I'd end up with roughly a 20"x30". I can't imagine ever going that big but I could if I wanted to. Ideally keep a master file you can size down to whatever print you're making at the time. Always size down, never up if you can help it.

Generally speaking, if you're just wanting an 8x10, scanning the original to size at 600 dpi is a good base (if you don't plan on going bigger than that.)

[Francois]

Bigger is always better but there's a point of personal diminshing return.

That's right. There are 2 parts to this.

First is scan resolution. You can very rapidly, as you go up in resolution, get a file size which becomes unmanageable for the computer. It is unlikely you will crash it but waiting 5 minutes for an operation to complete is totally annoying to me, especially if it doesn't change anything on the printed picture.

The other part is the viewing distance. A billboard uses a very low resolution yet can show an amazingly continuous tone at normal viewing distance. Who would look at a billboard at a distance of 3 feet? Nobody.

What's cool with ScanCalc is that it takes all these things into account so you can optimize things.