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making a file for print
I’m now doing more and more full colour digital banners not printed by me but we do all the art work then send them of to the printer
now i know your going to say its best to talk to your printer but is there a basic way for me to get the basics right
for an example if I’m going to make a 12feet by 3 feet banner in say photoshop is there some basic settings i need to start with i.e document size etc etc
i normally do all my work in flexisign and i find it very simply to use but photoshop is another world to me although i am picking things up slowly
the banner I’m making needs a background image of blue silk and I’m not sure about setting it out
if any one could give me some basic as to size and what res in need to be working in that would be greatmany thanks
rich -
7 Replies
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Hi Rich,
It just depends on what quality you want the banner. You can design it at size, at the resolution you want. Or you can design it smaller, say 1/4 of the size, but make sure you design it in a high enough resolution so that when your printer makes it 4 times bigger the resolution isn’t too low. If you do it at 1/4 size at 300dpi, it will be 75dpi final print.
-Marek -
if you look at the silk image and you zoom in to it, or even print out a sample on your desk printer (at the correct scale) and it looks pixelated or wrong, then have re-think. The maths of image scaling isn’t important but if the image is a lo-resolution picture then it will be bad.
Photoshop works by drawing for the screen (pixels) where a designer program like Flexi is made up of curve values, if you use a combination of Photoshop and Flexi then you are doing what most of us here would do, creating large images in Photoshop can be time consuming.
I dont think I have helped u much there, but a 12 x 3 foot will be quite lo-res… if I go into Photoshop a create the page 144×36 inches at 100 pixels/inch in CMYK = 197Mb image. If your computer is fast enough then you might be able to work with that image space. However if your doing a close up exhibition banner then I would consider 150pixels/inch.
Dave
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thanks guys
i will have a play about and see how it goes
rich -
Just out of interest Richard, I use Flexi. if you were sending the file to me (for example) it would be easier to send as Flexi. If you were sending to A N Other who uses say sign lab or corel then it would have to be sent as .eps .ai or .cdl or as a last resort high res .jpeg. See if you can send as .pdf ……….that seems to be the way to go nowadays.
L J
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sounds great john
thanks mate -
In addition to owning a small decal business I work for a company that prints large banners and billboards. We like to have everything at 300 to 600 dpi at a 1" to 1′ scale. The farther away it will be viewed, the lower the dpi requirement.
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Rich it’s probably better to ask your printer what they want (!)
Lynn
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