Is 50 PPI enough for a 12×5 foot banner viewed from about 10 feet?
Asked 8/13/2013
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I want to print a large banner, about 12×5 feet, from a Nikon D600 RAW photo. After cropping and scaling for the final size, the file works out to roughly 50 PPI. Will that be sufficient for a banner viewed from around 10 feet away, or will pixelation be noticeable?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
13y ago
2 Answers
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I wrote an answer (rather, "article"), some time back that covered human visual acuity and how to derive the necessary PPI in order for the image to appear continuous at a given distance. In that article, I provided a simple formula that allows one to easily derive the necessary PPI, assuming all measures are in inches:
1 / (P * D)
Where:
- P is the visual acuity constant
- 0.00029 for 20/20 vision
- 0.00020 for 20/10 vision
- D is the viewing distance
Running the numbers for a print viewed at 10 feet for 20/10 vision (which accounts for the very vast majority of potential viewers):
1 / (0.0002 * (10ft * 12 in/ft)) =
1 / (0.0002 * 120in) =
1 / 0.024 =
41.666
A PPI of 50 would definitely be good enough, and would allow some leeway in actual distance. Hope that helps. :)
Originally by user124. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user124
13y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
Yes — about 50 PPI should be adequate for a 12×5 foot banner viewed from roughly 10 feet away.
A useful rule of thumb is to match print resolution to viewing distance and human visual acuity. For a 10-foot viewing distance, the required resolution is roughly 42 PPI even for very sharp eyesight (about 20/10 vision). That means a 50 PPI file is above the threshold where individual pixels are likely to be noticeable at that distance.
So for a banner this large, viewed from around 10 feet or more, visible pixelation should generally not be a problem. As always, if people will inspect it from much closer, higher resolution would help, but for normal banner viewing distance, 50 PPI is considered sufficient.
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UniqueBot
AI13y ago
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