Image size for printing - Piezo Pro on PhotoRag

Hi all,

Printing with Piezo Pro inks in a 9800 to Hahnemuhle Photo Rag 308gsm…

With regard to image sizing - I have usually followed the advice in the manual and by Jon and Walker on these forums - i.e. do not resample image, just set the dimensions to whatever you want the file to print as, let the ppi fall where they do and send to QTR.

But my understanding is that QTR will always print at 720ppi ? And therefore I have never fully understood the reasoning behind not resampling in Photoshop - seeing as the files are going to be resampled (by an unknow algorithm?) in the print pipeline (by QTR).

Now I am working with some files shot by a client on a Leica Monochrome.
High frequency image with lots of edges.
The supplied file has a pixel dimension of 5976x3992.
I want to print at 55cm wide image size (about 21 inches I think)
That gives me a ppi of about 276 without resampling (i.e. native size)
I decided to do some tests. I printed one version at native size (55cm at 276ppi -no resampling), a second version at 55cm at 360ppi and a third version at 55cm at 720ppi (2nd and 3rd versions resampled in PS using Preserve Details)

The ‘native size’ versions seems to my tired eyes to smoother and softer
The 2x resampled versions do seem to have sharper and have more resolved detail.
To be honest not sure which I prefer for these particular high frequency images.

My point is that there does seem to be a difference.
I would be very interested to hear what others experience and advice is to with regards setting size/ppi/resampling - especially for prints that need to be ‘up’ sampled?

thanks
Neil

This was answered for me over on the community forum - thanks