Acrylic mounted prints - pros and cons?

[LongQ]

Afternoon all.

Question as per title really.

What are the Pros and Cons of having acrylic mounted prints and does the result vary a lot depending on the acrylic material used?

Reason for the question - elder daughter has invested in an acrylic mounted print and is somewhat unimpressed with the perceived sharpness.

I have not yet checked the file size sent nor seen the print in decent light. The image apparently has a lot of small detail that, I am told, has gone AWOL along with sharpness. I'm not sure yet whether that is likely to be just a printing thing or, possibly, a generic challenge for acrylic mounted prints of enlargements that start out with small subject areas containing fine detail.

Any guidance would be very welcome.

Thanks in advance.

[CVP]

I can only speak as a viewer. We have them all round the office for products our subsidiaries make or things our products have been used in. All of ours are razor sharp and just like a really high quality print to look at. Suggests pointing the finger at poor printing

[GetCarter]

Bought one for Mrs Get for her birthday (photobox). No complaints.

[andy-xr]

My Mrs took a photo of a squirrel in Central Park on my old D40 with a 35mm 1.8 set to jpeg. When she saw it on the laptop she decided she wanted it poster printed to hang in the lounge. I wanted to upscale it so there was a bit more to work with, and went looking for Genuine Fractals and stumbled on this: http://www.fredmiranda.com/SI/index.html which is an ace action.

If it's an issue of the original not being all that great which is magnified when it's printed big, that might be able to fix it. I only went +10 on the one I had done, printed at 40x20 it's come out quite nice

[LongQ]

Right, thanks for that.

I'll investigate the file to start with but as I recall the shot it was fine (Paid for Pro work) so it may be a re-size issue or just over-expectation. Frankly I suspect the latter but we will see.

She had a different image (not pro work) printed on a form of canvas (very fine "weave" looking more like a sort of textured paper now I think about it) with which they are happy. Totally different sort of image though and not really comparable in any way except that it was bought at the same time from the same supplier. (No idea who as yet.)

[LongQ]

andy-xr said:

My Mrs took a photo of a squirrel in Central Park on my old D40 with a 35mm 1.8 set to jpeg. When she saw it on the laptop she decided she wanted it poster printed to hang in the lounge. I wanted to upscale it so there was a bit more to work with, and went looking for Genuine Fractals and stumbled on this: http://www.fredmiranda.com/SI/index.html which is an ace action.

If it's an issue of the original not being all that great which is magnified when it's printed big, that might be able to fix it. I only went +10 on the one I had done, printed at 40x20 it's come out quite nice

Hi Andy,

I've got a couple of options for resizing at high quality that seem to work nicely. Right now though I don't have a copy of the file to play with. I should have one somewhere I think (the pro shots were provided on disk) but I'm not sure where my backup disk is. Rather than seek it out I'll get daughter to sent the file on and then, assuming it is of a reasonable size to start with, try some basic printing to see how well it stands up for what she is seeking to achieve.

Anyway, thanks one and all for the responses. My take is that there should not be any fundamental problems to watch out for so it's time to look in detail at the details.


Ta.