Advice needed on hard printing of a specific image

For printing you need the ICC profile of the printer and to calibrate your monitor to AdobeRGB. This is when you find out how good the monitor actually is. Printers have a wider gamut than SRGB and if you don't reprocess the image for printing it will not print what you see on the screen. Any good printing company should accept 16bit file formats. If you print on metal you will need to learn about CMYK printing.

The best rule for printing is to not go lower that 300 pixels/inch, so in your case with a 12k resolution you could print up to 40 inches on the wide dimension… but you may want to pixel peep to see if you are happy to that size. But having said that, modern printing methods can achieve better resolution and you may start seeing little noisy details (if any - I haven’t pixel peeped your image even though I gave it a “like” the other day) if you try for the 40” size.

I’ve printed a few items on metal, and it would be interesting to see the difference between direct metal printing versus white flood layer (printing a white base onto the metal before applying the image). The white flood layer will show the work in any light (it’s like printing on high quality paper), but the direct to metal printing needs reflectance to see the image - and when there is reflectance, the effect is really nice. I have a M31 on metal on display in a room with a lot of natural light and love it during daylight hours, but in the evening it goes really dull, and the neighboring Pacman (printed on white flood layer on the metal) starts to steal the show.

Another note - I just printed a Rosette onto white-flooded metal. I was disappointed in the light blue oxygen highlights - they became very blanched and lost a lot of saturation, I believe because the company auto-scaled the luminance. If possible, see if the printer will give you a proof prior to printing. For a lot of these online portals where you can order metal prints, it’s a pretty automated process and you may not have the proof option. But a phone call to express your concerns - if they are a real printhouse - will help them get the project the way you want it. I just feel that many astrophotos might be subject to autoscaling the output since any top ends in the histograms are little pinpoints and probably really don’t register a lot of weight in their software and your histogram goes heavily light - especially your gorgeous starless nebulosity - the printer will really have to focus on keeping faithful to the histogram.

Worst case - maybe they can print the job on high quality paper, maybe half-sized to your intended finish size before you commit to a larger investment in full-size metal.

EDIT: Okay, I’ve now pixel peeped your image. When I zoom in to your AB image, to 0.13x zoom, that presents 100 dpi on my screen. Zooming to 0.39x, that shows me the detail at a virtual 300dpi, and I feel your image holds up nicely. It seems the dusty fingers still have some sharpness at that level (which would be equivalent to someone getting within 12” of your print, if done at 20” wide, 18” away if done at 30” wide).

Whatever you decide, I think the image will be a conversation piece…. just don’t get into the ‘green’ discussion ;-)

CS,
Mark

Thanks Everyone!

As I understand now, based on your comments, I can easily go with A2 size and most recommended printing on metal. I appreciate info on white flood layer printing, never heard of it before.

Mark mentioned asking a printing company for a proof prior to printing. What is this?

I'm intrigued by metal printing on white flood layer option, thinking to order a small-sized test print at first.

What good printing company would you recommend in USA?

That’s a really great image - very abstract and vivid colors!

I’ve used Fracture for glass prints; their prices are quite competitive - especially when they have a sale. The resulting prints are extremely vivid, although the dot-pitch of their print process is visible if I get too close to the print (15 inches).

More recently, I have used BayPhoto for quite a few of my print projects and have mostly been very happy with the result (apart from wishing that I’d chosen a semi-gloss finish, rather than high-gloss). I have had them print a variety of smaller metal prints - and a monster 96in x 48in metal print of the Milky Way over the Atacama desert, which is the centerpiece of my living room. As I mentioned earlier, I’d strongly suggest that you consider choosing a lower-gloss finish, as the glare/reflections on high-gloss prints can be quite distracting at times. For an image as colorful as yours, I’d also suggest having a look at their acrylic prints as an alternative to metal prints. From what I understand, BayPhoto is considered fairly high end, and they offer drop-ship services for many other companies.

I’m planning to send my next print project to Bradley Print and Photo - they have a somewhat different process for creating metal prints - and have a wider color gamut as a result. I’ve visited their gallery, and I was very impressed by the prints they had on display. I just need to find some more wall-space in my house!

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