I’ve been dying to see how iPhone photos hold up to rather extreme enlargement.
According to Microsoft, the maximum printing size for a 2-megapixel photo is 5×6.7 at 240dpi.
So what did I do? I went ahead and printed this photo at 12×18 at 240dpi!
(The MAXIMUM size you can print at Costco, and it only cost me $2.50.)
The final result?
In one word: Stunning.
12×18 Noritsu Print from Costco.
…and I used to work as a printer at a professional camera lab!
Of course if you view the image closer than 2-3 ft you can see the grain in the image. However, most photos of this size are usually viewed at a distance of at least 4-6ft away. In this case, the photo looks amazing. The grain in an iPhone photo is irregular. iPhone photos have much smoother grain than many digital point and shoot cameras, which is a great thing: iPhone photo grain mimics analog film grain.
Detail of print showing grain.
So there you go.
Go and make gallery-ish sized prints with your iPhone without fear of humiliation from your art friends.
If they are so close that they are peeping the grain of the photo and complaining about that then I would say they missed the whole point of how cool this is and what possibilities this creates for lo-fi photography.
Have fun!
-Kirk
Step by step instructions:
1. Take a good iPhone photo (enough light, not blurry)
2. Apply a CameraBag filter, save photo at highest quality (look inside CameraBag settings)
3. Download photo to computer.
4. Email photo to Costco’s photo lab, or bring file in on CD.
5. Print photo at whatever size you want. A 12×18 print is $2.50. How can you beat that?
6. Enjoy! Impress your friends! Have an Art show!
7. Blog about this article or better yet, Tweet about it on Twitter 
6 Comments
looks great! just wondering, did you upscale it in photoshop, or just five costco the 2mp file and they upscaled it to 240dpi?
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that’s incredible. i’m going to give costco a shot. thanks for the tip!
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This does look cool. A great way to make the most of the iPhone camera! Hopefully the 3rd Gen iPhone will have an even *better* camera…
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COSTCO processing is really incredible, I discovered it last year. Although I’ve not used an iPhone I’ve done similar prints with the same pixel to final enlargement ratios. In my case the local COSTCO’s on-site processing seems superior to their centralized facility…I sent some test shots to that facility to get even larger blow-ups, but I also sent some smaller ones at the same time so I could compare local to central…local prints had better colors. (I only tried this once, so it may not always be true.) Also, after a lot of searching around I discovered that you can get ‘standard’ frames and pre-cut mats at Aaron Bros. that go perfect with COSCTO sizes.
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I have to say, that is FUCKING GORGEOUS.
I was linked to you by David Pogue, by the way.
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Crazy… I tried blowing up one of my iPhone picture to 4×6 and 5×7 and it didn’t turn out nearly as well.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wilshirepix/3839467109/
Lovely pic by the way.
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