Importing Small images for Large printing

[David Van Staden]

Hi All

I am designing a large poster advertisement. The size of the poster is 1260mm x 530mm 300dpi. Now I want to use an image on the poster, but it is much smaller than the poster size. the image size is 56mm x 85mm 300dpi. Can I enlarge that image to fit onto the poster (canvas) without losing resolution and end up looking crappy? Or should I use an image close to the size of the poster? Bear in mind that the image will span vertically over half the poster.

Thank You

 

[Steve]

For starters I don't understand the dimensions 56X85 to 1260X530, did you mean 530X1260?
Either way you're distorting the image.

Either way it's virtually impossible to blow up an image that much and get acceptable results.
It will be flat and lacking any detail.

 

[David Van Staden]

thanks for the reply. The pixel size of the image(56mmx85mm) that I specified is : 667x1000. Now the pixel size for the 1260mmx530mm for 300dpi is: 14800x6260 pixels. "Bear in mind that the image will span vertically over half the poster.". So the poster is a landscape poster, and the image will span vertically, since the image is a portrait image. So if I only have an image of that size(667x1000), will I be able to use it on the landscape poster canvas, where the image takes up about 1/4 of the poster/canvas space, without the image losing significant quality? So I basically need to increase the image 6 times it's size to be able to fit on the poster/canvas according to my needs.

 

[Steve]

Try it and decide for yourself.
Make sure you select Bicubic Smoother (Best For Enlargement) on the bottom.
The pixel difference between 667 and 14,800 should be all you need to know what the results will be.

You'll be able to judge on the screen if it's usable or not.