I went into a little gallery and saw some photographs/illustrations printed on large sheets of aluminum (80" by 120").

The details of the prints blew my mind (300dpi). I googled and found a few companies that offer that printing service, charging roughly 25 to 75 cents a square inch. Therefore that image cost about $4,800 give or take. Selling price was $6,500.

I wonder though if any member on this forum ever created such a print from their own photographs? I'd love to hear some feedback as I'm already starting to save up on getting one printed (much smaller though - lol).

According to the companies that manufacture these things, they claim that their prints are far superior than anything else available.

I've got an aluminium print on my wall at home, it's not as big as the one you mention (it's about 20x40) and was nowhere near as expensive as that, the print quality is indeed superb and certain things in the photo have a kind of muted shimmer to them, when I got it done I remember they said that this time of print doesn't suit images with large areas of white. Got it through a German company called WhiteWall. The one I got was the direct print onto aluminium.

One of the companies I checked out would offer that size for about $150.

Do you think it was worth the money to have it printed onto aluminum?

This is the trick Peter Lik uses to get people to part with huge sums for his images.

Combined with carefully lit galleries, great salesmanship and bucket loads of hype of course.