Help needed preparing design for vehicle wrap print

[David McDonald]

Hi

We’d print that as follows.

Sides – large horizontal tile from the back to the rear of the front door, circa 5-10cm to wrap over the top over the top, 5cm bleed to back, leaving a 1cm shared overlap around the height of the slider bar (or a bit lower) onto a lower horizontal tile of the same length bleeding to the scuff bar, then a slim strip for under the scuff bar. The entire side recess being contained within the top larger horizontal tile so no joins into the recess. The doors would be a single vertical drop, and the wings separate pieces. Some just carry the big horizontal tiles right forward across the doors and wings but I don’t like the look of joins in these places.

Rear – left and right full vertical drops with 1cm shared overlap, minimal bleed to sides and base and 5-10cm’s over the top.

Front – over cab and bonnet as separate pieces.

This tiles well into a 60" roll with minimal wastage, apart from some waste alongside one of the lower side tiles (not the bit under the scuff strip), but we usually find something to fill this space – perhaps some design element that we will decide to print and contour cut to avoid it distorting elsewhere when wrapping the slab pieces of vinyl, or bits for the rear hinges or the grille surround.

We mostly use Photoshop and make the files as large as we can ranging from 100 – 250 dpi at actual size, save it as a TIF and the combination of Onyx and our HP360 being a ‘contone’ printer (no idea) means it RIPS extremely quickly compared to using an .eps file.

Hope that helps

Dave

[David McDonald]

Don’t print the overlap lines – you will never get the registration so perfect that they wont show somewhere and when we use Versaworks we always use all corners as a default (we did some work on figuring out why along time ago but cant remember the reason why we thought this was the best default).

[Daniel Evans]

Thanks David

That’s a big help.

I was planning to do it the same way, i.e. horizontal with the door vertical.

Just can’t work out how to do that in versaworks but that was a big help, still fairly new to that software.

Thanks

[Daniel Evans]

Aghhhhhh!!!

Hi all

How do you design your vehicle Wraps / Walls / Large format Graphics??

I’m trying to print my first ever wrap job, not as easy as I thought.

I’m ok when it comes to designing wraps when using vinyl in standard colours, I use illustrator, the file is small, I work in 1:20 scale, everything seems to go ok.

I’ve now took a step up and i’m trying to print my graphics but i’m having one hell of a time.

Should I be designing wraps in Photoshop? I’m used to Illustrator, I know how it works and I’m quick.

I’ve been going through the boards / Google and there are so many people saying this is how to do it and they contradict each other.

Just wondered what process you guys use?

Can you talk me though your precess start to finish, all the way to sending it to the printer.

Thanks

[Jon Marshall]

Generally I would set it up in Flexi/Illustrator, maybe using PS to size bitmap stuff or do any effects. Make sure you allow plenty of bleed all round. I then make masks of the printed sections with overlap and export as PDF. I usually cut text in vinyl and overlay afterwards.

[Daniel Evans]

Thanks Jon

I originally did the setup in illustrator, got everything lined up how I wanted it then imported the images onto the template in illustrator. All the images are at 1:10 and 1500 resolution.

Had issues doing it this way, wouldn’t save eps for some reason, guessing the file is to big or something.

I’ve now done it all again in photoshop, not the easiest in my opinion and I’m just about to try and save it again.

Spent all of yesterday and today trying to get this setup for a decent output.

I’ve done it at 1:20, 1:10, 1:2, 1:1 and now I’ve gone back to 1:10

[Daniel Evans]

What size should files be in general for a van wrap? I.e file size

[Simon Worrall]

For whatever reason, Adobe has chosen to limit the artboard size in Illustrator to "not quite big enough"
Everything we do is therefore some multiple or division of 10.
That is the only way to stay away from total confusion.

Simon

[Daniel Evans]

This just gets better, is 150dpi output to much for a vehicle wrap, if I’ve designed it at 1:10 so I’ve given it a resolution of 1500 but I can’t save it as a PDF or eps in photoshop, shall I just change it to 720dpi

[Simon Worrall]

Daniel I think most people are too wound up about getting the resolution as high as possible. In practice, unless you are viewing the vehicle from a few inches away, you can get away with a much lower resolution than 72 dpi, as long as the colour is good. I have done a perfectly acceptable wrap in 24dpi, due to the customer being unable to find a higher res photo.
Simon

[Daniel Evans]

Wow, thank you, gonna lower the red to 72dpi then

[Daniel Evans]

Resolution I meant to type