Humanity has only come this far because of the wonders of technology. As technology ceaselessly progresses through the persistent push of sciences and engineering, many aspects of society, in this same way, are pushed into the future.

One such example is the novel field of image printing. From the inception of the printing press to the transmogrification into 3D printing and other forms of the service, both hardware and software aspects, of the trade have come far in the 21st century.

In comparison to today’s sharper images that reach up to 4K pixels and thousands of DPI, images of the 2010s can come to look like a nostalgic relic from times long past. In the emergence of the 2020s, development has spurred a new frontier of possibilities. With the advent of blockchain technology, art and printing -- as many experts believe -- have given rise to new opportunities.

While it’s true that printing, admittedly, is not the conventional way of enjoying NFTs, many experts in the gallery and multimedia industry, believe that there is a latent and separate demand for this deviation.

Founder of The Art of Selling Art, Jason Matias, suggests that one way that artists and entrepreneurs can benefit from printing NFTs is by marketing both physical and digital versions of their blockchain-minted artwork or collectibles separately.

“I can sell my ice cave piece as an NFT for 3 ETH each [about $7,000], and I can sell the physical piece as an edition of 50, so they’re completely separate,” Matias believes. “You can attach a digital [work of art to its] physical, but you don’t need to.”

The belief extends to seasoned and decorated multimedia specialists. These experts could not deny that sometimes even they, though leaders in digital art, prefer physical copies over assets in cyberspace.

Multimedia artist and a fellow of New Museum’s first virtual reality, Rachel Rossin claims that even she “would prefer to have a painting over a JPEG.”

How do collectors, artists, and enthusiasts ensure that prints come out as good as they do on screen? In terms of quality, common sense automatically turns to quality-enhancing methods. But is that all there is to do it? Experts say: no. There’s more to the process than meets the eye. What do people need to bear in mind to produce optimal prints in larger, high-quality sizes?

What are NFTs?

First, make sure to understand what exactly you’re dealing with. What are NFTs?

Non-fungible tokens, more prominently known as NFTs, have taken the world by storm. While most of the world remains unaware of this new technological marvel, the NFT market has generated billions of dollars in 2021.

The history of NFTs, the market, and what it is exactly can be a bit much for one person to explain. Getting to a point of fundamental understanding of this new-age novelty will take hours or even days of research. In the short yet eventful lifespan of NFTs so far, it has covered, affected, and influenced a wide range of trades that allowed artists, gamers, collectors, and many other enthusiasts to reach out to their markets in secure and life-changing ways.

Through the Ethereum blockchain’s “smart contract” feature, assets minted through this tech wonder can be easily traceable through built-in public ledgers. These ledgers feature every transaction ever made for art pieces, graphics, collectibles, and any asset used in NFT transactions.

NFTs and Larger Format Printing

Now NFTs can come in all shapes and sizes. So the primary factors that will affect the printing process will be 1) the file size of your NFT; and 2) the place in which the NFTs are to be hung. If you go with a NFT print on demand solution, most of the work will be done for you.

Now, for the most part, typical enhancement methods can come a long way in making sure that images are of the best quality. However, there will be instances when the file quality of a certain NFT can no longer sustain the desired and optimal size needed for a display. In these cases, run-off-the-mill enhancement can no longer refine small files as it is stretched into larger printing formats.

Such complex problems, then, are solved by more advanced means -- with the use of artificial intelligence. Through the use of sophisticated AI technology, companies like Topaz Labs and Upscale Pics were able to develop software and applications that will allow the enhancement of files in small sizes into optimal printing sizes available.

Upscale Pics utilizes a state-of-the-art artificial intelligence that they developed to successfully enlarge and enhance images for their customers. They call this super-resolution. Their foundational dataset was a collection of five million images. Since then, the company and its core team have constantly built on the data that they had, synthesizing or shooting whenever needed.

Upscale particularly trains its AI image enhancer through the use of hundreds of thousands of pictures. Its training revolves around the detection of low-resolution images and predicting the matching high-resolution asset at very high accuracy. This AI adds extra information to your image to make it high-quality despite having low sizes.

The AI-based enhancement services focus on two primary things -- the text and the eyes. The AI was specifically programmed to make these elements the priority because these are parts that human eyes can easily notice. The AI works best on files or images that have sharp corners, vector illustrations, images with sharp borders like plastic or latex, and juxtaposed or opposing textures -- like a chessboard.

The quality enhancement capabilities that such AIs possess cannot be attained through normal filtering techniques. These services and features can only be done if a system inherently possesses the necessary information essential for the enlargement of your image. Using the Upscale super-resolution online through their AI greatly boosts the resolution and sharpness of your images. If the copy of the NFT to be used for the printing is a low memory JPEG, it’s ideal to augment the service with a noise removal feature for optimal results.

There is always a perfect size for every location and this futuristic method of enhancement can help collectors and enthusiasts alike in hanging up the NFT of their dreams.

Like this article? Be sure to subscribe to our newsletter for more content like this.