Although increasing print image size by any means, Photoshop or special fractal enhanced interpolation, the amount of image information in the original cannot be increased, improved or added to, so it will not matter how well enlarged, it remain to appear to look like a small picture made large. This of course if hung on a wall so as to be viewed at a fair distance may not be a disadvantage, It is the same principle that was involved in the huge panoramic images Kodak made for display in New York's Grand Central Station - they always looked great because the viewer of necessity was always a good distance from what was being viewed.

Besides what David said, you can easily do a test on resizing with and without interpolation. Resize various ways to your target print size, saving each one with your method in the file name. Then do an 8x10 crop of a similar area from each one and have some test prints made. Make sure to view them at the same distance you would be viewing the full size print. You can even put the method of resizing into the sample print using a text layer in your image editing program so it doesn't get confusing.

Quote:
Question?
What is the largest print size you have made with the Olympus E-510, and have it still look good. I am planning on a print at 24 by 36, and was wondering how clear it would be. Does increasing the pixels count on Photoshop really help to increase print size clarity?
Any information would greatly be appreciated.

David & Larry,

Thank you so much for the information, you guys are great!

If you will be making large prints somewhat often, I would recommend you check out QImage (the Studio Version). The program was developed for digital printing to allow upsizing and downsizing of the images with the highest quality...it has several selectable scaling options. The most recent version can now develop raw images for all the current Olympus E series cameras. It also has powerful editing abiltities as well.

I now use QI as my primary ORF developer. I can now print from my raw image without having to convert to a JPEG or TIFF as QI saves the raw and edit parameters in small side car files (like XMP) which saves an enormous amount of disk space. The print job can be saved and recalled at a later time which avoids having to reset all the printing paramaters for a single print or for multiple prints in a job.

I don't mean to criticize or say what you suggest is not worthy or valuable, but both Adobe LightRoom 2.0 (just announced) and Apple Aperture 2.0 provide just about everything you described and a great deal more for the digital camera user to process, edit and output digital photographs not just in prints but nearly all kinds of output uses, and it is all non-destructive keeping the original camera file intact and unchanged as it was produced by the camera. Nearly all dSLR camera brands and models are supported by both of these applications.