Museum quality prints / display?
noquiexis
Posts: 32
This question is primarily directed at DAZ Commercial Artists: those who create the DAZ models for sale, and those who create commercial art with DAZ products for large-format media. Commercial printers are welcome to chime in, too.This is NOT for home printing. There are already dozens of topics about that here.
Some display monitors are 80"W x 64H" or bigger. Let us compare monitors to the same size print (80" x 64"). Prints of that size could only be produced on commercial hardware. For this format size, could a render be generated, or an image produced through third-party software (Photoshop or other) that would be acceptable for an art museum to display with their regular collection (without pixelation)?
Some of the art that I have seen here is "museum quality". Are there any artists here who currently have works on display at an art museum? Our local art museum hosted an exhibition on "The Art of Video Games" with real video games that one could play (in a limited fashion). Some of the displays were massive!
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Monitor size does not automatically mean better or higher resolution, in fact the bigger the monitor the more the limits of the resolution become obvious to the naked eye.
When printing large scale work it is the practice of printing at a far lower DPI than a commercial print for smaller scale work. "Museum quality" up close can often show what those limits are. A billboard on the highway can be printed at 20 DPI because you are seeing it from such a distance the eye makes up for the gaps in the image. Printing large scale work at higher DPI is not only expensive and costly it presents overworking the printers that produce them. Large prints are often not viewed up close to the resolution requirements are far less demanding.
Correct, the physical dimensions of the monitor are not applicable to the resolution of the digital image. To print something with fine detail you'd want to create your digital image at 300 dpi (or ppi). What that means is, you determine the physical size of what you want the final printed image to be (let's say 11x17 inches) and multiply by 300. So in this example, an 11x17 print at 300 dpi would need to have a pixel resolution of 3300x5100 pixels. The actual size of the monitor does not factor in.
I'm sorry... But when I read the title of this thread all I had a vision of was Musée d' Orsay with a big banner hanging in the front "The Art of Naked Vicky In A Temple With A Sword"... But very classy and made out of good quality fabric.
Some commercial printers use dyes instead of ink. The dyes tend to bleed a little filling in the gaps ink printers often leave so the dye printers don't need to print at such a high DPI to get good results. You really need to discuss this with whoever is going to do the printing.
What is the question here? How to get good images on large display monitors, or how to print to "museum quality" standards?
While waiting for a reponse: monitors and their display electronics are limited by their total pixel resolution, You can't get a 4K image out of a 2K monitor. The highest resolution in regularly available commercial projected theatrical exhibition is 4K, and there are exhibition monitors and even home flat-screen TVs at this resolution as well.
For printing, "museum quality" usually relates to achival properties, especially fading when exposed to strong lights. If a digital print is used, the resolution can be whatever looks good at the typical viewing distance. A 4x5 foot poster at 150 pixels/inch can look fine when viewed at 10 feet away. Unlike original art, most patrons don't need to view the work closeup. They're looking at the overall composition, not the brushstroke detail. It's just a different form of appreciation.
In any case, when large blowups are needed, there are professional enlargement software that's used. Any large format printer has their favorite.
Tobor,
The question is: Can images made with DAZ software be printed in a large format (or displayed on a monitor) that would be of acceptable quality for an art museum? There is a great deal of artwork here (none of which is mine) that ought to be on display where the general public may have access to it.
So I'll take a stab at this. The really short answer to your question is yes, it is possible.
Here's the longer version: Daz Studio renders a 2D digital image. It doesn't do printing. When you render the image in DS, you can choose the resolution for the final render. So let's say you want a final product that is 22" wide by 34" tall. The question becomes what is the minimum dots per inch in the printed format that would look presentable. That, of course, depends on the distance from which a person will be viewing the artwork. Let's assume that 96dpi would be sufficient since the final printed copy will be viewed from 5-6 feet away. This means we would want to render the image at a resolution of 2112x3264. The rendered image could then be provided to a commercial printing company and printed on archival quality paper at 22"x17" (at 96dpi) for purposer of display. Many printing companies want the original image in PDF or TIF format, so you may need to use Photoshop or similar app to save the render into a different file type.
If the image isn't going to be printed, but displayed on a monitor, then all you need to know is the resolution of the monitor, and render the image in Daz to that. So if it's a 1080p monitor, you would render to 1920x1080. If it's a true 4k monitor, then you would render the image at 3840x2160. The physical size of the monitor is irrelvant, only it's display resolution matters.
Just as an added note on monitor size...the size of the pixels is important...lots of screens are made bigger by making the pixels bigger, rather than adding more of them.
The simple answer is yes. My Nikon D300 was 12MP at 4288x2848. My Sony A7M2 is 24 MP at 6000x4000. I have printed musuem quality prnits at 17" x 22" from both cameras. Any decent printing program will do this. It's not a mystery. Most of the photos at any exhibition are made with cameras of similar resolution.
So, some of this has been covered, but I'll reinforce a bit what the others have said:
* For print, the results come down to the outfit printing it. A 16x20 image at 300 pixels/inch is 4800 x 6000, so that would be a good target render resolution. (For xomparison, a Nikon D810, which has a 36 megapixel full-frame sensor, is capable of raw resolutions up to 4912 x 7360 pixels) Not everyone renders to this size, though, as render times increase with size. For larger prints, usually a high quality "blow up" is created using appropriate professional grade enlargement software. Those who print large posters or billboards often have their selection of such software, tested against the printers they use.
* For monitor display, most of these are 2K, about the same as home flat screen TVs. They're just bigger. The limiting factors are A) The monitor resolution, such as 1920 x 1080, B) the video driver connected to it (e.g. HDMI, which can support 2K video), and the resolution of the source material. Obviously, you'd want the source resolution to be at least as high as the monitor displaying it.
I've seen some digital art exhibited here and there, and much of it is the same size as ordinary pictures and photographs. I'm sure there are some digital artists wanting to exhibit at fresco sizes, but let's remember the Mona Lisa is actually quite compact. (Had to be or it wouldn't have been so easy for one person to steal it.)
I've sold print ranging up to 16x20 (4800x6000 pixels). I've had posters made and the companies used programs such as Alien Skin's Blow Up. For paintings, I have several friends who print on both paper and canvas. I've printed on canvas. You can also then paint on the canvas, making it a very unique piece.