My client from New Jersey came home from a previous trip with his vacation pictures from Arizona, including the iconic Colorado River location, know as Horseshoe Bend. The D5000 Nikon used produced a 12.3 Megapixel image that was 4288x2848 at 240DPI. At 300DPI, it would only optimally produce a 8"x12" print. Yet, there were also quality issues related to sharpness and digital noise and didn't feel like the entire field was crisp, probably a result of not achieving hyperfocal distance when executing the shot. Also the color temperature and color balance needed help.

Thankfully with the original .NEF RAW file provided by client, I can do a lot more than with a little .JPG.

The file is now 10800x7200 at 300DPI...300DPI is magazine print quality. Basically, you had 8x12 size prints that are now 24x36 size. And if reduced back to 240DPI, would be a 30x45 size! The digital noise showed up in the sky and water...water mostly. The sharpness issues were with rock detail, especially long distance. I softened both water and sky to resolve noise issues while increasing sharpness in all of the landscape. Obviously, I also did global edits for standard edits of brightness, contrast, highlights, shadows, white and black points, clarity, dehazing, etc. I also made artistic choices by doing a minor crop to create better composition. I also had to remove litter that was in the foreground...a small plastic ziplock like bag. Lastly, a couple of small color-based edit changes...One to White Balance, and another to a specific color channel related to the sandstone luminosity. Auto White balance used to be my friend for the first dozen years, but increasingly my evolving eye is finding that its not perfect, so I cooled down the color temperature slightly to not be so warm and have a little better balance

In summary, I've increased size by 300% while increasing quality by 200% or more. My clients are thrilled.