Nightward / Blog / How to Print and Frame a Star Map So It Looks Like a Real Print
How to Print and Frame a Star Map So It Looks Like a Real Print
A star map is mostly dark. That single fact drives almost every decision about printing one, and it is why the same file can come back looking either expensive or cheap depending on choices made in about four minutes.
Resolution: what the number actually has to be
Print quality is measured in dots per inch, and 300dpi is the standard for anything held or hung close. A 10×14 inch print at 300dpi needs a file of 3000×4200 pixels. Anything much below that and the star points — which are small, hard-edged and unforgiving — go soft and start to look like dust.
Check the pixel dimensions before you send anything to a printer. A file that looks perfect on a screen can be a quarter of the resolution it needs, because a screen is showing you roughly a hundred pixels per inch and flattering everything.
Paper: matte, almost always
For a dark print, matte or a lightly textured fine-art stock is the safer choice, for a reason you can see across a room: gloss reflects. A glossy print of a black sky behaves like a mirror, and in any room with a window or a lamp you will spend more time looking at the reflection than at the stars.
If you want depth rather than flatness, a heavier stock — 200gsm and up — holds ink better and does not buckle. Lighter paper in a large dark area tends to ripple as the ink dries, and once it has rippled it stays rippled.
The exception is if you deliberately want the sky to look wet and deep, in which case a satin or pearl finish splits the difference: some depth, much less mirror.
Ink coverage, and the one thing to tell your printer
Large solid dark areas are the hardest thing a consumer printer does. Banding — faint horizontal stripes across what should be even — is the usual failure. If you are printing at home, use the highest quality setting, let it dry flat, and do not stack prints while they are damp.
At a print shop, ask for a giclée or pigment print if the option exists. The word gets overused, but pigment inks handle dark gradients better than dye and fade far more slowly — which matters for something meant to hang for years.
Size: pick the frame first
This is the practical advice most people get backwards. Standard frames are cheap and everywhere; non-standard sizes mean custom framing, which routinely costs more than the print. Decide where it is going to hang, buy the frame, then print to fit it.
Useful sizes: A3 (11.7×16.5in) and A2 (16.5×23.4in) in most of the world; 11×14 and 16×20 in the US. A 10×14 print drops into an 11×14 frame with a small mat, or fits a 16×20 with a generous one.
The mat is not optional
If you do one thing from this page, do this. A mat — the card border between print and frame — is what makes a print read as a print rather than as a poster. It gives the image room, it stops the glass touching the ink, and on a dark image it provides the light edge that makes the dark look deliberate.
Off-white or cream generally beats bright white against a night sky; pure white can be harsh enough to make the print look grey by comparison. Two to three inches of mat is a safe range. Wider looks more expensive, up to the point where it looks like you mis-measured.
Glass
Standard glass is fine in most rooms. If the wall gets direct sun, anti-reflective or museum glass is worth the difference on a dark print specifically — it is the image type that suffers most from glare. Acrylic is lighter and safer around children, but scratches, and scratches show badly on black.
Where the light goes
Do not hang a dark print facing a window. It is the single most common mistake and no glass fully fixes it. Perpendicular to the window, or on the same wall as it, and the print keeps its depth all day.
Before you print
Check the spelling of every name and the date, twice, at full size. It is the one error that cannot be fixed after framing, and it is far easier to miss on a screen than on a wall.
Nightward exports at 3000×4200, which is a clean 10×14 inch print at 300dpi — sized for a standard frame with a mat. You can see the finished card before deciding whether to keep it, and if you want the sky over a particular city, the city pages show what that latitude can see.