A3 drawing and airbrushing printing zoomage help

[Zaphy]

Hello everybody,

I encountered a little bit of a problem. but please bear with me as i may explain it weird or have typography mistakes.

Problem : I want to make a drawing/airbrushed piece onto an a3 sized paper in photoshop, now i noticed in a previous experience with a little star i shaded for a folder layout that if i zoom in at 100% (actual pixels) and shade it from 100% it wont come out of the printer like this. Its downscaled, the whole image was still a4 (my example the folder was a4 size, 300dpi) but everything got smaller and therefore lost detail.

Now i'm wondering if there is percentage i should be zooming in at to make it appear just as the printer prints it. So i wont get a detail loss and have better shading. But then for the a3 sized one.

The first star is zoomed in at 100%. Second is 50 %.

example.jpg

50%.jpg

[Zaphy]

Its finished, turned out smaller like i thought it did. So i cant shade on 100% i think its around 60-70 % zooming in that i should start shading but still not sure. Anyways here is the dragon i mentioned http://fealy.deviantart.com/art/Project ... -128469987. Second tablet piece it doesnt make sense on most technical areas but hell its done xD

[Isick]

but everything got smaller and therefore lost detail.

That is not true.

The thing you must understand is that Zooming in and out on the Computer Screen does not - in any way - alter the data of the image; it simply changes the size of that image ON SCREEN (and only on screen).

It doesn't matter whether you apply a gradient (or shading) at 100% zoom, or 200% or 1% zoom, the same gradient is being apply and altering the data of the image in the same way.

If you want to figure out exactly how large your printed image will be you need to do some math. Take the DPI (I think you said it was 300) and divide it by the pixel dimensions of the image. Example:
If you create an image that 900 X 900 pixels in size and the DPI is set to 300 then the printed image will be 3 X 3 inches (900/300 =3)

In short, the detail in your image that you see at 100% zoom will be printed - guaranteed. If you think you are getting poor print quality it may be because of your printer / printer settings, but it is not because of Photoshop.

I hope that clears some stuff up, Good Luck!