Printing a digital download: sizes, paper, framing.

What you actually have

Every download from this shop is one JPEG, around 9,000 pixels on the long edge — some are 10,240 by 10,240 square, the tall Klimt works are 8,960 by 13,440. There is no watermark. It is saved at maximum quality, in the sRGB colour space, which is what every consumer and trade printer expects. The commercial licence adds a larger master file for very big walls, but for anything up to about a metre the standard file is the right one.

Pixels are the only thing that matters for size. Ignore “dpi” in the file’s metadata; it is a label, not a property. What decides how large you can print is how many pixels you have and how close people will stand.

How large it can go

The rule of thumb printers use: 300 pixels per inch for close viewing, 150 for a picture seen from a metre or more, 100 for a wall seen across a room. Divide the pixel count by the figure and you have the print size in inches; multiply by 2.54 for centimetres.

So the honest answer for a home is: up to about 75 cm on the long edge at gallery quality, and larger — a metre, a metre and a half — at the distance you actually look at a picture over furniture. Every product page states the file’s exact pixel size so you can do the sum for your wall.

Paper and finish

Gold on black is unforgiving of the wrong paper. A glossy photo paper turns the black into a mirror and the gold into a smear of reflections. What these works want is a matte or satin fine-art paper with some weight — 200 to 310 gsm — and a slight texture: “hot press” cotton rag for the cleanest line, “photo rag” for a little more tooth. The blacks go deep and velvet, and the gold reads as pigment rather than as a screen. Hahnemühle Photo Rag, Canson Rag Photographique and the house “fine art matte” at most good printers are all right.

The white and pearl works are the exception: they can take a satin or a baryta paper, which gives the whites a little lift, and they survive glossy better than the dark works do. Still, matte first.

Beyond paper: aluminium (Dibond) prints give the gold works a metallic depth and need no glass — the best choice for bathrooms, kitchens and any humid room. Acrylic face-mounts are the most luxurious and the most expensive, and the reflection issue returns. Canvas softens the line work; I would keep it for the painterly Klimt pieces and avoid it for the construction drawings.

Where to print

Three routes, in order of how much you want to be involved. The print button on each product page sends the file to my print partner, who produces a giclée on 200 gsm matte paper, 30 to 90 cm square, bare or framed, and ships worldwide; you never handle the file. Second, any online fine-art printer — in Germany, WhiteWall, Saal Digital and Posterlounge; in the UK, theprintspace and Point101; in the US, Mpix and Nations Photo Lab — will take the JPEG upload and offer the papers above. Third, a local giclée studio will let you see a test strip on two papers before committing, which for a large piece is worth the visit.

Whichever you choose, upload the original file, not a copy that has passed through a phone or a messaging app, both of which quietly recompress images. Choose “no auto-enhance” or “as supplied” if the printer offers it. The colours are already correct.

Framing

For the dark works: a thin black, dark walnut or raw oak frame, either no mat (the picture runs to the frame) or a wide off-white mat — 6 to 10 cm — with the bottom border slightly deeper than the sides. Museum glass or a good anti-reflective acrylic, because ordinary glass over a black print is a mirror in daylight. For the white and pearl works: pale oak or white frames, and a mat in warm white rather than pure white so the paper does not look grey against it.

A framing rule from the golden ratio that always works: make the visible mat width about 0.618 of the frame’s shortest side divided by four — in practice, a 6 cm mat on a 40 cm print, 9 cm on a 60 cm print. It is proportion, not a fixed border, and it scales.

The mistakes that cost a reprint

• Printing from the phone gallery instead of the downloaded file — half the resolution disappears.
• Choosing glossy for a black ground. Matte, always, for the gold works.
• Letting the printer “fit to page” on a non-matching size. Choose a print size in the file’s own proportion (square for the square files, 2:3 for the tall Klimt files) or crop it yourself first.
• Ordinary glass in a room with a window opposite. Anti-reflective glass, or aluminium with no glass at all.
• Going too small. Measure the wall, divide by 1.618, and print to that.

If you are choosing what to print first: The Golden Tree of Life and The Sovereign Ledger both hold detail at 100 cm and beyond; The Golden Aperture prints well even on a small format because it is a single curve.