Determining max print size

Good Morning, A buyer is interested in the attached photo. They want to know how large it can be printed. It was taken with the Canon Digital Rebel (3072x2048). The largest I've printed previously with this camera is 30" in the long dimension. That was a straight up print several years ago with no post processing (as I had yet to learn anything about photoshop) The nature of this photograph is making this hard for me, since it's not a static image where any blurred or unsharp details will be greatly noticeable. I'm also unsure as to whether sharpening an image like this is even a good idea. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Eric Virkler
Faces of Nature Photography
www.ericjvirkler.com

I am just looking into this myself. As far as I understand without any Photoshop resizing you can take the pixel count and divide it by 300 to get the size you want to print. Therefore in your image, 3072/300= 10.24 2048/300=6.82. So you can print that image 10x7 without losing anything. If you took it into PS and re-sized it maintaining 300DPI you can make it as big as you want but PS will add to the image, so some of the detail could be lost. Sharpening should be done prior to the final output. Please don't take this as expert opinion because I am just looking into this myself and really need to learn more! So I look forward to additional input from the experts on this forum.

I'm sure with this image you can go larger than 30 inches. Has to be up-scaled correctly. Suggest you ask question here with your sample above.
http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/forum.asp?forum=1003
Tom

Thanks for your help Nick.

Tom, I'll post something there right away and see what they say. Thanks.

Eric

My local pro printer requires 240 or 250 pixels per inch so your image would be about 13" x 9" without resizing.

For upsizing I use OnOne Genuine Fractals. It does a better job IMO than Ps upsizing, and with this image I think it would work well. Also at 30" you would be viewing the image from somewhat far back, which would deemphasise any resizing artifacts. When Genuine Frantals upsizes substantially you get an interesting painted look.

If you are interested Eric I can upsize your image and get it back to you. Let me know.

John, I was given instructions on resampling in the dpreview forums. I'm going to try their method in PS Elements. I'd like to take you up on your offer and compare the results. How should I go about getting you the image. Thanks so much for your help.

Eric

I'll PM you Eric.

Thanks for upsizing my photo John. For anyone following this thread, he used Genuine Fractuals and it did a remarkable job. If I get the sale, I'll drop a line here on how large I printed the image and how it turned out.

Thanks again to all.

Eric Virkler
Faces of Nature Photography
www.ericjvirkler.com

Also, the printer who will print it has made large prints before and very likely will want to use their own software for upsizing.
Not that you own effort at it is wasted, it will give you a good idea of what is possible and how you may like it.
Tom

Thanks Tom.