Imagery Guidelines
When providing or specifying your own imagery for CinemaScapes, there are a few simple rules to follow to ensure a high quality product.
The image should the same aspect ratio as the final print.
While searching for images, you’ll more than likely run into three types of aspect ratios: portrait, landscape, and panoramic. Considering most rooms are longer than they are tall, a panoramic image will yield the best possible quality after the image is blown-up.
Using a portrait or landscape image will produce a significant loss in image quality because the sides of the image need to stretch the length of the room. The figure below illustrates this problem. [the dotted line represents wasted image, which results in wasted resolution.]
Click to enlarge diagram
The image needs to have a very high resolution.
The larger the original image the sharper it will appear when blown-up to its new size. For best results, the image should be no less than 5000 pixels wide. The height is not important as it will change with the aspect ratio.
Regarding DPI
Technically, the DPI of the original imagery (see ‘Native Resolution’ below) should be 11” x 17” at 300 DPI. However, the important number to look at is the width in pixels - not a reference to DPI. The reason is that the overall area of the image is usually left out when describing DPI, which is critical. If an image is described as being simply 300 dots per inch, how many inches are we talking about? An image can be 300 DPI over 3” x 3” which only stores 900 x 900 px.
Native resolution
The imagery needs to be be natively high-res, and not enlarged. For instance, if an 11” x 17” image at 72 DPI is blown-up to 300 DPI in a program such as Adobe Photoshop, it will not gain any detail and look no better than its native 72 DPI resolution. Blowing up DPI will only duplicate pixels (with interpolation) and leave a massive file with no benefit. Please do not do this; find an image with adequate resolution.