Image size guide for printing on acrylic

How to select photo size for acrylic prints

We often receive acrylic print orders where the file size is too small for the size the customer wants. Unless you are a professional photographer who understands reproduction, it can be confusing. We recommend that customers set the highest resolution on their cameras if they wish to produce an acrylic print. The most recent Iphones as well, takes quality photos.  When we create metal prints on brushed aluminum, the quality of the photo is more forgiving then acrylic, as the brushed aluminum hides some of the imperfections of the photo.

If you don’t have access to photoshop then just follow the guideline below

To see the size of your image, right click your mouse over the photo and click Properties. Click on top Details and you will see a width and height numerical figure for pixel size.  To convert those figures to size, as an example let’s say its 3000-4000. Divide those 2 figures by 150. 150 is D.P.I we print at. Using the method the largest size you can print at is 20 by 26 approximately.  If we create the photo at 130 D.P.I which is acceptable the size changes to 23-31. Depending on the style of the photo we can decrease the D.P.I if needed. Abstract photos can work with lower resolution. Portraits however need the maximum D.P.I, for best results.

When you right click on DETAILS you will also see the D.P.I size under the pixel dimension. If its 300 still divide the pixel dimensions by 150 to establish photo size. The same goes for when your image is 72 dpi.

Many customers only have a small file and want us to work with it. After testing many softwares that increase file size, we found one that gave the best results. Perfect Resize allows you to increase the pixel dimensions of your photo and file size.  So we can take a low resolution file that does not meet the guidelines above and create a large magnificent Acrylic print with superior resolution. The software brags that it can increase capacity by more the 100 times however we are more conservative and are confident that we can increase file size by 50-60 percent with amazing results.

Which brings me to my next point. We always enjoy speaking with our customer, so if you are unsure just send us your photo in the consultation page and let us determine what works best for your acrylic print.