While there are many “rules” to photography, some have more flexibility than others. When composing images people often try to adhere to the Golden Mean Rule, or the Rule of Thirds. However, there is always the matter of subjectivity and creative differences in how one approaches composition.
The Largest Print Rule, by contrast, is not one of those rules. It’s pretty much standard, and accepted. So, what is the Largest Print Size Rule? Popular Photography recently re-released this (their September 2007 issue), as part of the Twelve Rules of Photography. Since they didn’t really attach more than the formula to the rule, I took a few minutes and gave it some real world usage by inputting some numbers. Basically, it tutorial for today is a one page write-up of the real world terms for this rule, and a chart for ease of reference (using Megapixels, image dimensions, and print sizes). Feel free to download it for reference, by following this link: here. Thoughts and feedback are always welcome.