Garbage In - Garbage Out
Since I began making custom wallpaper 10 years ago, I had the field to myself. Now there are a number of companies featuring custom wallpaper – which I really don’t mind as my niche of nautical chart wallpaper is still unmatched by my competitors.
But what does affect me, is the poor quality of many of my competitors. In short, I hope that my unique concept will not be judged by another company’s inferior product.
Which brings me to today’s article. Whatever image you choose to make into a mural, you will be disappointed if you don’t take pains to start with a quality image – and you don’t get that from images on the web, or your camera phone. "Garbage in – Garbage out" is not just a commentary on computer data; it also holds true for producing a good enlarged image.
To illustrate, let’s use a picture of a tugboat that came from the web for an example. Looks pretty good right?
But now look at the very same picture when we try to expand it to wall size. In a word, YIKES!
And truthfully, that blurry image isn’t even close to be of large enough scale to work as a mural. In other words, it would look worse if it were expanded further to fit the wall!
Simply put, much of the work of creating a mural from an enlarged image is to begin the process with the highest-quality image that your can find. However, in our digital world, quality images are surprisingly hard to find. Yet, to produce a mural, any image must then be converted to pixels, then expanded in the printing process while making it look good. How do I do it? Well, silly, I’m not going to share THOSE details with you; you might very well be a competitor! But trust me, I do have that part figured out!
The point of this article is that if you want a cool mural on your wall, you should first work hard at finding quality, sharp images in documents or photos that will minimize the distortion and pixilation when enlarging happens. This is an area where I can help. Just call me.
It may take some time and work on the client’s part to find and select this high-quality image, be it a photo or a map/chart. But if done right (by Nautical Chart Wallpaper, I modestly suggest) you will have a mural that will be a dynamic decorative component rather than a disappointing distortion.