How was this postcard made, and how much can I enlarge it?

September 25, 2023 9:22 AM

I have an old postcard and I’d like to know two things about it: how it was made, and how much I can enlarge it and still have it look good as wall art.

The postcard

1. How was it made?

It’s postmarked 1908, and an ebay listing calls it a lithograph. Does that mean it was based on a photo or a hand-drawing? If I go to what I suspected was the same spot now, the bank on the left isn’t nearly that rocky and steep. I don’t think the terrain has changed THAT much in ~100 years. Does that mean I have the wrong spot (if it was based on a photo), or could it have been artistic license (if it was based on a drawing)?

2. How much can I enlarge it, and how?

I have the original postcard, and I want to know how much I can enlarge that, not how much I can enlarge the photo of it I linked. I’d like to hang a larger version of it on the wall and have it look nice and crisp, even close up. My friend has a scanner that can enlarge, and I’m not sure what I need to know to tell whether to use that or to bring it to some kind of printer to enlarge it. If I should bring it somewhere, what kind of shop am I looking for? Once it’s enlarged, where online or in person should I have it printed in a larger format for display? I'd like a reasonably good job without spending a ton.

posted by daisyace to Media & Arts (7 answers total)

Best answer: A lithograph is a printing process; it's an earlier but similar process as modern multicolor printing -- early printing process used actual stones etched, but later ones used metal 'litho' plates. If you take a magnifying glass to it, you'll see the grid of tiny dots. Lithographs are usually a much finer dot pattern than magazines or newspapers, which result in a higher quality image.

It appears to be taken from a black and white photograph, which was then printed on photo paper, and then painted by hand. This was then used to make the litho plates, one for each color, and then these plates were inked and pressed on paper by a printing press in succession.

One reason to identify this as a lithograph postcard is to differentiate from a "real photo postcard" -- there's postcards out there which are literally photographic prints, so no dot pattern under a magnifying glass, and these have a different valuation versus lithographic postcards. In particular there are people who only collect real photo postcards, and they would be very angry if they bought this thinking it was a hand-painted RPPC when it was just a litho postcard.

As far as enlarging: you'll begin to see that litho dot pattern at magnification, like a magazine. You can get some magnification out of it -- I usually scan at as high resolution as I can, digitally enlarge it to 2x my intended size, gaussian blur to smooth out the dots, then reduce it 75% (so 1.5 intended size), run a unsharp mask to resharpen, then reduce to the size I want. But you really are going to have a tough time turning this into a poster sized picture just due to the original size vs how huge you want it to be.

Here's a possibility though: in my years I have found both litho *and* RPPC postcards of the same image. Keep looking for the real-photo version, and you might get a better copy for enlarging.
posted by AzraelBrown at 9:44 AM on September 25, 2023 [10 favorites]

1. It's probably a Lithograph, but might be a Collotype. (To be sure I would have to look at it with a loupe.)I read through the relevant parts of Encyclopedia of Printing, Photographic, and Photomechanical Processes Someone probably took a photograph and then that image got transferred in some way to a plate, lithographic or otherwise creating the black in the image. Then someone would create plates for each of the colors by hand. So the black of the image is photographic, but the color isn't.
2. I doubt that you will be able to enlarge much without it looking bad. The general process, would be to scan at a high resolution, and then see what the image looked like on your computer at different sizes. There are tools that can help remove the dot pattern or enlarge with Ai which might be helpful.

I would also note that with these postcards, some have good alignment of the layers and some don't. This copy seems to be a bit sharper than the one you linked to.
posted by gregr at 9:53 AM on September 25, 2023 [3 favorites]

I enlarged one to the size of half a page of ditto paper, so let’s say 8.5 x 5.5, and it still looks good. I wouldn’t go larger than 8.5 x 11. Have fun!
posted by 8603 at 10:28 AM on September 25, 2023

I just used a nice color printer (a big one at my office) to do the job. So Staples or another copy store should work. The scanner maxed out at 600 dpi, so your friend’s scanner should get the job done.
posted by 8603 at 10:42 AM on September 25, 2023

Scan it at the absolute highest resolution your friend's scanner will manage. You might check the manual - sometimes the highest resolutions use an algorithm to interpolate and 'create' pixels for the high resolution. Try the highest and also the highest it does without interpolation. Then determine the resolution you are going to print (300 DPI is common). Use photo editing tools to resize the very large scan to the output size you want, specifying the print resolution.

The basic idea is that you want as much image information in the scan as possible, and higher resolution than the intended print.
posted by TimHare at 11:11 AM on September 25, 2023 [1 favorite]

Best answer: I used to run a print shop that specialized in fine arts repro. Getting a good, high-resolution scan of the postcard is a good start, but equally important is using a scanner with good color fidelity. A scanner meant for fine arts repro, like a larger Epson or ImageAccess, or a Kurabo, will have not only the resolution needed for a decent enlargement, but sufficient color depth and accuracy to produce a scan that is true to the original. Most scanners found on office copiers, all-in-ones, and most consumer-grade scanners do not. (Our "small" scanner had an 18x25" flatbed and was ~ $10,000)

Especially when your source image is a litho or some other form of reprint, you need to manage expectations. While a good scanner will pick up fine details, you're also going to be able to see the colored dots that make up the image, and this will only become more noticeable as you scale up the image. But, keep in mind where you are going to display the final, enlarged print, and from what distance it will be viewed. Modern photo printers print at 1200 or 2400dpi (dots per inch) or even more, but roadside billboards are often printed at 150 or even 75dpi. Why? Because they are viewed at such a great distance, we don't even notice the relatively low resolution of the print.

Which is to say, if this was to be a framed print to sit on a desk or side table where people would likely take a closer look, you'd probably be fine at 8x12 inches, but even at that size, the dots making up the original print are going to be noticeable. But, if you printed this larger, say 24 x 36 or so, and hung it on a wall behind your couch, where people are going to be enjoying it from 6 feet away, you'll probably be fine. At that distance, just like with the billboards, our eyes and brain do some smoothing and the dot patterns aren't as obvious or jarring.

You'll also see a big difference in the appearance of your final print, depending on what kind of media you have it printed on. A high-gloss photobase paper looks fantastic, but is notorious for highlighting every little flaw in the image, including the colored dot patterns that make up your original postcard print. A semi-gloss or "lustre" photo paper will mask some of this, and on down the line. There are textured watercolor papers that not only give a wonderful look to some images (not so much with photographic prints, but definitely so with more painterly images) and the texture in that paper will also hide a lot of imperfections, be it "pixelated" or blurry image from a low-resolution source, hiding dot patterns in the original like your image, or whatever. Much the same can be said with prints on canvas; the texture will hide a lot of flaws.

If you're willing to bend a little on staying true to the original image, you can get away with a lot more enlargement than you might think. Start with as good a scan as possible, at the highest true optical (not interpolated) resolution as you can get. A little playing around with a "brushstroke" or "watercolor painting" filter and a print on watercolor paper or canvas, and you can hide a lot of "JPEG blur" or other graininess, lossy-looking enlargement, etc. , and wind up with a very pleasing spin on the original. And again, depending on where you'll display it, you can probably go a lot bigger than you're expecting, because of the typical distance it will be viewed from.
posted by xedrik at 1:38 PM on September 25, 2023 [2 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks all -- very helpful!
posted by daisyace at 1:48 PM on September 26, 2023 [1 favorite]