Printing Panoramas: What are the typical sizes? And other questions....

[cayenne]

Hi all,

I'm shooting panos...and thinking about making some large prints of them.

I've never done this, and curious about what are the typical sizes you get these printed in?

Are there labs that specialize in pano prints? (print, mount, frame)

Do you use 300dpi?

What are the typical papers available for large panos?

How do you generally mount and how do you frame them? Styles, etc?

I have never done this before and hoping for some advice and maybe links one resource to learn and maybe experiences and preferences.

Thank you in advance,

cayenne

 

[ethanz]

Howdy Cayenne, typically when I print panoramas, I have a space in my house that I am planning to put it. That kind of dictates the size that I print. For large prints I often just mount it to gatorboard or foam, as that is the cheapest (I have like a 120" x 16" and an 8' x 3') There is another large one where I bought a large frame (maybe 30" x 40") and just made a custom mat to fit the print. I have printed/sold large pano prints on canvas and metal before too, they are nice and easy. Check out Bay Photo for printing them. They even will mount right on gatorboard for you. Most times it is impossible to get 300dpi at these sizes (especially with a 1dx2...) so either you just use a lower dpi because at that size most people aren't pixel peeping or use a program that can upsize well (supposedly my friend says On1 can do that well?).

TLDR Print Panos whatever size you want depending on two things: your budget and your wall size

 

[cayenne]

Howdy Cayenne, typically when I print panoramas, I have a space in my house that I am planning to put it. That kind of dictates the size that I print. For large prints I often just mount it to gatorboard or foam, as that is the cheapest (I have like a 120" x 16" and an 8' x 3') There is another large one where I bought a large frame (maybe 30" x 40") and just made a custom mat to fit the print. I have printed/sold large pano prints on canvas and metal before too, they are nice and easy. Check out Bay Photo for printing them. They even will mount right on gatorboard for you. Most times it is impossible to get 300dpi at these sizes (especially with a 1dx2...) so either you just use a lower dpi because at that size most people aren't pixel peeping or use a program that can upsize well (supposedly my friend says On1 can do that well?).

TLDR Print Panos whatever size you want depending on two things: your budget and your wall size

Thank you....!!

Yeah, I"m just starting to try to gather my thoughts and learn about this.

I'm hoping to soon open a SmugMug site for sales.....and I was wondering what size I'd need to crop my panos for...wasn't sure of the general offerings that labs gave.

I've been reading and usually panos it seems, are ratios commonly at 2:! or 3:1 or even 4:1.

I've been shooting things that would be pretty darned wide....like say a landscape, or maybe the whole of Jackson Square in New Orleans...someting wide and epic, but I"ve never thought about how I'd have to crop for size for a real print.

I'm guessing with a SmugMug account....using the likes of Bay Photo or WHCC as the back end lab, they'd only have set offerings and likely not custom print sizes? I'm still trying to research and I have email queries to SM and the labs about this.

I did find one lab in some videos that seem to offer pano pricing:
Artmill Pricing page

They had an option for custom sizing.....

Anyway, I"m just trying to research and figure things out....and was trying to find out if there were more "common" pano sizes so I could start going back through my images and seeing what they would look like cropped to those size ranges....etc.

Thank you for the reply!!

Please keep the comments coming!!

C

 

[Labdoc]

300 DPI, I like to print print on aluminum or acrylic. Comes with choice of mount. I use artbeatstudios, many others do similar quality work. I have a lot done there and after so many dollars spent, they give a discount and their facebook page shows sales all the time. Used bayphoto and photojack, both good too. Size depends on what the customer wants. Pixels come in to play with large prints and close viewing distance.

 

[cayenne]

300 DPI, I like to print print on aluminum or acrylic. Comes with choice of mount. I use artbeatstudios, many others do similar quality work. I have a lot done there and after so many dollars spent, they give a discount and their facebook page shows sales all the time. Used bayphoto and photojack, both good too. Size depends on what the customer wants. Pixels come in to play with large prints and close viewing distance.

Thank you!!

Hmm..yep, I'm also learning about the pixel counts and what to set. I will plan to get into my photos and see what the resolution is. Most of my panos of the top of my head have quite a large resolution, so was thinking that I could use a high dpi (or should I be saying and measuring in ppi?)

C

 

[ethanz]

Take a look at my site, I use Smugmug with Bayphoto as the print shop. I'm able to select the products I want people to be able to buy and the sizes. Then the customer just chooses which one they want and crops it how they want it. Here is an example (8414 x 2455 resolution)

Canada Roadtrip - Ethan Zentz Photography

Pictures from my road trip to Western Canada in 2018

www.ethanzentz.com

Click buy and see what you can do. There are wall art but also under prints you can choose pano prints. I wouldn't be disappointed if you bought some pictures
I just upload as large of file as I can. That example picture has 300 ppi.

 

[stevelee]

I have a roll of 13” wide paper, so that is the height of my panoramas. I have an Epson R3000 inkjet. The width I print depends upon the wall where I will hang it. I have printed some about 2’ and some about 3’ wide. I aim for 300 dpi if the original has at least that at the print size, and come as close as I can get to that.

I have the prints framed commercially.

 

[cayenne]

Take a look at my site, I use Smugmug with Bayphoto as the print shop. I'm able to select the products I want people to be able to buy and the sizes. Then the customer just chooses which one they want and crops it how they want it. Here is an example (8414 x 2455 resolution)

Canada Roadtrip - Ethan Zentz Photography

Pictures from my road trip to Western Canada in 2018

www.ethanzentz.com

Click buy and see what you can do. There are wall art but also under prints you can choose pano prints. I wouldn't be disappointed if you bought some pictures
I just upload as large of file as I can. That example picture has 300 ppi.

Thank you for that link!!
Impressive images on your site!!!


Ok, I see what you mean about that crop tool for the user.

I"m wanting to pick out maybe 2-3 sizes that I think are best and not have the user crop the image, I want to choose what they will see and get 100%, hence me trying to figure out what size to make my images to upload, etc...

I've been reading a lot and some say that giving too many choices to and customer is a bad thing in some ways, so I'm wanting when I get set up to only have a few choices of my images.....at least I'm wanting to start that way and see how it goes.

Ugh...I'm now vassilating back and forth again between SmugMug and Zenfolio......I saw that on SM, that if you give framing options (with Bay Photo only I think) that you can't mark those options up, only the images...on Zenfolio you can.
Also ZF, seems to take a bit less commission....but SM will handle sales tax 100% for me for my state, so that would be nice....ugh...choices.

Ok, back to panos. Thank you VERY much again....it's nice to see a nice site like that and see how it is set up and works. I've been enjoying your images too!!

Thank you again for the reply and info!!!

C