Need Tips For Prints

[Mister Lolligump]

I would like to make some prints for a convention I want sign up to, and I'm in the middle of digitally painting an image. The size I want to make it is 11 x 17, and then eventually smaller, but I'm unsure whether I should set the size of the Photoshop image to that size, or resize it larger when I print it.

Right now, my computer can't handle the large size and progress is really slow. There is lots of langging and loading and it's quite annoying. Could I set the Photoshop size of the image smaller, or will the image lose it's quality when it's stretched?

This is my first time trying to make proffesional prints, so any other tips would be great.

[Seijaku_Ishida]

If you set it to 300 dpi you won't have as much loss printing larger as you would if it's set to, say, 72. It will still make the file size larger, but it might not be as much if you made the canvas size that big. If it still lags, maybe play with the dpi more, but I wouldn't go much lower than 200.

I have printed larger this way, and all my images turned out pretty clear. ^^

[Vicemage]

It is generally not recommended to enlarge an image. Ideally you should work above the size you're intending to finish at (or at least at that size, at 300 dpi), rather than attempting to scale up.

[Latopazora]

Like they said, 300 DPI and make set the inches to the size paper you want. Also, I'm not sure if you're already aware of this, probably are, but I'll say it anyway- CMYK format, don't use RGB.