resolution...

[rfellers]

I've been working on a set renderings (retail spaces in an airport) for the past month and sent my client the latest set of drafts. I delivered 12 renderings at roughly 1280x720 pixels. The client then asked for them at 11x17 @300dpi (5,100 pixels wide). They assumed that I could just send that immediatley to them and were bothered when I told them that it would take several days to render them all at that resolution. This is a new client and it always a struggle to educate them on the first project. Initially I had a contract that laid everything out - schedule, resolution, when/what information that I would need from the designer, etc. The client has ignored all that. We are now several weeks over budget and I have had many all-nighters scrambling to make last minute changes for new deadlines that come out of nowhere. I'm kind of getting off topic now - just need to vent a little. Here is my real question:

What final resolution do you provide to your client?

I typically send finals at 3,000 pixels wide. I've never had a complaint from a client at that resolution, even when they print it large on a billboard. First time clients usually ask me for the final at 300dpi without telling me how many inches across. My response is always, "I need to know how far it is L.A. to New York and you just told me 55 MPH". Once they realize they have no idea what they are talking about, they usually agree to 3,000 pixels. I've always thought that is enough for most projects, but I'm just curious as to what others offer as standard resolution.

Thanks,
Ryan

[dmf-123]

We typically use 3,200 pixels across, simply because it conveniently fits some board templates we've set up. But in any case, 3,000 should be more than fine for 95% of uses.

I feel your pain though. Usually, when I hear '300 dpi' it is coming from someone who doesn't really understand resolution, but was once told that 300 dpi = 'high quality.'

[super gnu]

im quite surprised to hear this.. wherever ive worked in the last 10 years doing this stuff, we generally stick around 5 or 6000 pix in the largest dimension... this means a full a3 300 dpi print can be done, and considering viewing distances, they can pretty much blow it up to any size and it will hold up. thats actually not high compared to high end advertising stuff though.. i have friends in the car ad business who normally output at 10k+

if they want the images to go on hoardings 3k is pretty small..


clients generally dont understand resolution or rendering... had a funny one when a client insisted that the images they got from one of our competitors could be zoomed into as much as you wanted, and why did ours go pixellated when you zoom right in in photoshop...?

being as we wanted to keep them sweet we just rendered out at 12k (the bg photo was only 4k or something, so we blew it up to match..looked terrible) , but they were happy.

you probably met one of my old clients

[dmf-123]

Certainly in other industries they work at higher resolutions, but for arch viz it's rare that I've needed to render stuff out any larger...

I dunno, maybe its just that nobody has ever wanted to put my work on a billboard

[simmsimaging]

... "I need to know how far it is L.A. to New York and you just told me 55 MPH". ....

Thanks,
Ryan

Love that analogy - I have had this conversation about 7000 times, I'll have to remember that one next time My work is advertising print, so typical res for finals is 6-8K. I cap files at 8K now as it's just too damn long to render and magnifies the entire workflow too much. I basically cap all files at 24"@300 DPI on the long side.

[Morne]

About 2 months ago I did some initial drafts for a client at 1280 X 720. It was made pretty clear to the client these were drafts and not to be used for anything besides powerpoint viewing and he understood perfectly. 2 weeks ago I drove past the site, and they made a billboard 5m wide from the 1280 X 720 file
From the road, it actually doesnt look that bad as you would expect

[dmf-123]

Hahaha... nice.

Low res is the new black.

[AJ Jefferies]

We've just finished a job that was needed at 25'000 pixels wide - fun!

Render times for the high res file can be difficult to explain. We deal with a lot of ad agencies & companies that are used to comissioning traditional illustrators or retouchers, so they're used to having the final the minute the job is complete. As with most things, it's a balancing act - if they've no experience working with CGI, it's well worth explaining the process & factoring the final render time into the schedule. Likewise it's good to stay on top of things your end & be prepared by pre-emptively rendering high res versions. Not only to check for potential problems but also to give you an idea of how long it's going to take.

[chrisjacks21]

We as standard output at about 5000 pixels to the largest side. Often this is larger than required but if your client came back and requested a larger format, you would not only have to re-render but redo any post-production/photoshopping.

Also, it is often easier to retouch at a higher-res, and when images are sized down they will look cleaner/sharper etc.

We have also taken this approach with animations, even if the end format is PAL or smaller for the web, we output at 720p.

[super gnu]

hehe ive just realised.. chris you used to work at smoothe. me too.. (robin lawrie) now freelance. hows life? on the subject at hand though, very good points.. it sure is easier to retouch a 5k image than a 1k one.

[tammo]

A response i often get when i ask which resolution the client wants is: "Make it 80 Megabytes!".
Even some people working at ad agencies have no clue about picture file formats.

[joconnell]

I normally go around 4 or 5k too - As everyone has stated you only really need 300dpi for an a4 image. The amount of dots is totally dependant on how far away the viewer is going to be from an image. If you have something a4 size, you'll hold it about 12 - 18 inches away from your face so you can take in the entire image in one go. An a3 image has to be held slightly further away so you can take in the entire image so you can use a lower resolution and larger dots and your eye will still blend them together so you could probably print at 200 dpi and get the same optical quality. The same keeps going with large images for bus stops being printed at less than 50 dpi as you have to stand back a few feet to take in the entire image. One of the main factors is that the actual paper that the printers print on to can only hold so much ink before it starts to get weighed down, wrinkle and tear. So a large billboard can't be printed at 300dpi or else you'd end up with a paper / ink soup!

[joconnell]

A response i often get when i ask which resolution the client wants is: "Make it 80 Megabytes!".
Even some people working at ad agencies have no clue about picture file formats.

A print friend of mine explained this to me as that most design houses will know that a 20 meg files will contain roughly enough pixels for an a4 image, an 80 meg file will have enough for a3 and so on. It's a different way of thinking but it kind of works!

[chrisjacks21]

hehe ive just realised.. chris you used to work at smoothe. me too.. (robin lawrie) now freelance. hows life? on the subject at hand though, very good points.. it sure is easier to retouch a 5k image than a 1k one.

Hey Robin - things are good thanks! I will drop you a PM

[plastic_]

I found that for a poster it doesn't improve anything if I render 10000px wide or 2000px.
With a 10000px render, the edges may be sharp, but it also looks fake, like a computer game, because they are perfect straight. Also, textures start looking bad. Even if the textures are hi-res, corners will look strange.