I am an artist and I am interested in using photoshop to manipulate images. I would like to have as a final output a near photo quality large approx. 24" by 36" size print. My questions are:

First of all, should I be using a digital camera (Olympus D320L) to capture the images I want to manipulate or is it too low of resolution for the size of the print?

What else can I use to get the best res. image? (ie: use large format transparencies? then how shoul I scan?)

What would be the best printing method?

Are there anything I should watch out for?

Thank you very much in adv

-- Jason Yi (jyilisa@aol.com), April 20, 1999

Answers

My personal belief is that digital cameras can not provide a resolution high enough (at least cameras for the average citezen) to make prints that large. I have had experiance with various large format trancparency films - my suggestion is to use 4" x 5" film ( you may be able to get away with 2 1/4" film too). As for scanning, you probably can have a service bureau do that for you. OR If you want to have permanent use, you can purchase one of the many good flatbed scanners out there (with tranceparency attachments) Some good companies are - UMax (higher end models), Linotype- Hell, and for something cheaper, but in my opinion still excellent - Epson - Expression 636 models. There are so many other companies, I couldn't list them all. Good luck!! Hope this

-- Kim Dobson (crab@interlog.com), April 20, 1999.

Whoa! An Oly 320 is barely good enough for 8 X 10's. I think digital is out of the question for the sizes you are talking about if you care about image quality. I suggest 35mm and slide scanner, or maybe medium format camera. Some people like HP photosmart for scanning, it's cheap.

-- benoit (foo@bar.com), April 20, 1999.

I have printed files from a photosmart scanner to 24X36 however the image works out to about 90dpi. From a distance the print isn't bad however for this size the CD Master or scan from the new polaroid 4000 would produce a better image if you are looking at an output from 35mm or larger

-- Jonathan Ratzlaff (jonathanr@clrtech.bc.ca), April 21, 1999.