Photo Printing Service, Fine Art Printing Service, Canvas Printing Service, Trail Studio Hong Kong

The photo & art print artisan in Hong Kong
Collection point located in Wan Chai
email-order only

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Service & Fee Order Showcase FAQ About

印大相、油畫相製作 FAQ

Professional Photo Printing/ Fine Art Printing - FAQ

We are the experienced specialist who can turn your image file into wonderful art pieces, but it's best to avoid common file-related mis-conceptions & problems to get the most out of us.

Of course, we always carefully check the files & info, so you may just need some basic understandings & be confident to our suggestions.

1 What should I pay attention to, when choosing a file?
2 How to know if a file has sufficient resolution?
3 What is aspect-ratio?
4 What is bleeding-area?
5 Is the color/brightness of the print accurate?


1 What should I pay attention to, when choosing a file?
- Image resolution has to be sufficient. Attention: many mobile apps (e.g. whatsapp) will downsize images by default.
- Print & file aspect-ratio must be the same.
- Subject or people (also logo & signature) shouldn't be too close to the edge, or part of them may be covered by the photo frame etc.
- Enlarge the image to “100% crop" to check for defects, e.g. blurring, excessive noise, sensor-dust or undesired facial expressions.


2 How to know if a file has sufficient resolution?
- Unit of resolution is dpi – dot per inch. Resolution isn't always related to file size, but jpg <2MB is likely inadequate for large-size printing.
- E.g. If you want to print a photo at 30” width, and your file width is 4500px, print-resolution is 4500px / 30" =150dpi.
- >120dpi is considered good; <72dpi is considered too low.
- A common mistake is to choose a size too small for a large wall, in favor of very high-res. Unlike book-reading, large photos are meant to be viewed at some distances, proportion between it and the wall/ space is more important as long as resolution is good enough.
- It is a common mistake to read the "resolution" straight-forward in Photoshop "image-size" dialog-box, WITHOUT adjusting document-size WHILE keeping the same pixel-dimensions.
- High-res =/= sharp, image can be blurry due to digital-zoom, camera-shake, out-of-focus etc., enlarge at “100% crop" to check for defects.
- We don't recommend customers to sharpen their files as it's too easy to over-do it, we'll do so in a subtle manner, if needed.


3 What is aspect-ratio?
- It is length:height proportion of the image.
- E.g., if long-side / 3 x 2 = short-side, it is 3:2; if long-side / 4 x 3 = short-side, it is 4:3
- It is 3:2 for 135-format, APS-C cameras; 4:3 for 120-format, 4/3 and most smartphone cameras.
- Print & file aspect-ratio must be the same, otherwise part of the image will disappear in the printout (red area shown below)
What is Image Aspect-Ratio
- If there's aspect-ratio mis-match we will give suggestion, but we don't crop photos for customers, as it will alter image composition, which is a matter of preference, or aesthetically uncroppable


4 What is bleeding-area?
- For most types of printing, a few mm of the file-border can't be printed, this is "bleeding-area". Pro designers & photographers know this limitation and avoid placing important subjects near it.
- "Print-bleeding" doesn't occur in our giclee-print. But image-border will still be covered by frame rabbet/passe-partout (or trimmed/folded away in frameless-style products), this is "frame-bleeding".
- Viewable-size of a framed image is usually smaller than print-size.
- Avoid placing important subject/ logo etc. too close to the border (lower-right, orange border simulates frame-bleeding).
Bleeding Area Meaning


5 Is the color/brightness of the print accurate?
- With expert-operation & high-quality print-media, giclee-printing is well-known for its high color accuracy, which is our case.
- But oversimplified speaking, a color-accurate print-out may look different then most monitors which are likely inaccurate. As monitors emit light and with high color-temperatures, color-accurate printouts mostly look darker and warmer.
- Generally speaking, an indoor-use monitor when brightness set higher than 50%, is likely too bright to be used as print-reference, it can also hurt your eyes.
- Monitor accuracy can be achieved by using a high-quality monitor & calibrating with a spectrophotometer in a PROFESSIONAL way.
- Color-management is very complicated knowledge, overlooking just one keypoint or without real experiences can cause misconception. Trust that we are PROFESSIONAL when we raise a problem.
- If we judge that the brightness of your image isn’t good enough, we will provide suggestions/ solutions.
- Special note for B&W photos: grey tones (tint) from different era/ companies/ printing machines/ papers aren't the same & can be very apparent if displayed side-by-side.

Service & Fee Order Showcase FAQ About

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Photo Printing Service, Fine Art Printing Service, Canvas Printing Service, Framing Service