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When looking for information on printing sizes from my Polaroid digital cameras I found these charts excellent.
| Image Resolution | Maximum Print Size |
| less than 640X480 | Wallet size only |
| 640X480 | absolute largest, 4X6 |
| 1024X768 | 4X6 |
| 1152X864 | 5X7 |
| 1600X1200 | 8X10 |
Camera megapixels
Largest professional-quality prints 4 MP 11″ x 14″ 5-6 MP 16″ x 20″ 8 MP 20″ x 30″ 10 MP Poster size
Camera megapixels
Images on a 64MB memory card Images on a 128MB memory card Images on a 256MB memory card Images on a 512MB memory card Images on a 1GB memory card 4MP 40–50 91–100 171–189 362–400 724–800 5MP 35–40 70–78 141–157 283–313 565–625 6MP 27–32 57–63 113–125 226–250 452–500 8MP 20–23 38–42 75–83 151–167 301–333
Megapixels explained…
The way a digital camera works is that it processes light and color information through its lens and then records this information onto a removable media card. The information stored to this media card consists of digital data that is ultimately represented in digital pixels. A 2 Megapixel (MP) camera can process and record images that consist of 2 million pixels apiece. Similarly, a 5 Megapixel (MP) camera can process and record images that consist of 5 million pixels apiece. Why is this important?
Two reasons. First, the more pixels that can be recorded to an image, the larger the image can be printed. And second, the more pixels an image contains, the more detail will be revealed of the subject matter.
I also read is very interesting article which is very helpful also. It can be found on printrates.com
by: ziv haparnas One of the more common dilemmas for people is choosing the paper size for printing their photos. Everybody knows that if your digital camera does not produce enough pixels (or actually megapixels) printing its photos on a large paper size will yield poor quality and you will be able to see the actual pixels (also known as pixelation) So how many megepixels do I really need in order to print on a specific paper size? there is no one right answer for that. The actual quality of the print depends on many factors other than the number of pixels. For example the paper quality itself the printing process that is used the lighting conditions when the photo was taken the photo itself (i.e. portraits are different than scenery) and much more. However a rough estimation of how good a picture will be based on the number of pixels can be calculated and is actually pretty easy to do. When evaluating how good a print will be there is a measurement that is simple to use and provides a good estimation for the quality - it is called PPI (pixels per inch). PPI is actually the number of pixels along one inch. To get a good print you would need a certain PPI (on both X and Y axis). Experiments show that the following qualities are usually associated with a specific PPI number: PPI 100 - fair to bad PPI 200 - good PPI 300 - very good So all we need to do now is to figure out for each paper size how many megapixels translate to those PPI numbers. To calculate this we need to simply multiply the page length by its width in inches. The result is the number of square inches on the page. Now multiply this number by the square of the PPI number and the result is the number of pixels on the page which is the number of pixels we want our source photo to have. Here are the numbers calculated for some common sizes (for 100,200 and 300 PPI respectively): page 4X6 0.24MP 1MP 2MP page 5X7 0.35MP 1.5MP 3MP page 8X10 0.8MP 3MP 7MP page 11X14 1.5MP 6MP 14MP page 16X20 3MP 12MP 28MP page 20X30 6MP 24MP 54MP Again we would like to emphasize that these are just ballpark numbers. Factors like the ones mentioned above and also like the compression ratio used (low or high compression) and the aspect ratio difference between the paper and the camera can result in a need for more or less pixels. Our best advice is if you are not sure just try one or two photos before printing a large batch. Ziv Haparnas is a technology veteran and writes about practical technology and science issues. You can find more information about photo album printing and photography in general on printrates.com - a site dedicated to photoprinting. |
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