Topic: Printing advice

Ok so I've started a new job here in LA and it involves printing alot of banners, posters, collateral material etc. I have a few questions that I'm hoping someone with some experience may be able to help me with.

1) When printing say a 22 x 28 poster should I design it at that dimension then print or should I design it as 8.5 x 11 and setup the document to print at 256% larger to fit the 22 x 28? That's how they told me to do it here, but not sure if it's optimal or not.

2) Screen calibration. Exactly how difficult is it? We're doing everything in CMYK and sometimes my Magenta is blown out and my banners look screwy.

3) Font management.... AARGH!! I'm using Suitcase and all of our fonts are on an external server. After creating a Set of fonts from time to time I can't see the fonts or there are errors loading them. Should the fonts be local or is this fine? OR is there something better the Suitcase? My job bought it so we use it, but I would love to recomend something a little more reliable.

It's been fun but challenging at the same time. Thanks guys.

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When printing say a 22 x 28 poster should I design it at that dimension then print or should I design it as 8.5 x 11 and setup the document to print at 256% larger to fit the 22 x 28? That's how they told me to do it here, but not sure if it's optimal or not.

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Make the document the size that you are going to print it at. If not you may and probably will get some very jacked up results.

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Should the fonts be local or is this fine?

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from this I am guessing you are using a Mac? If so, I am pretty sure that Suitcase is the best way to do it. I am not a "printing" type of guy myself but I do work for a company that has a large print service, Heidlbergs and all that crap, so I can go ask them questions

Later,

C:\

Yeah working @ actual size is the way to go. Keep in mind though that when you're working on items that are on a much larger scale, such as posters and banners, that as high of resolution isn't necessary because they are viewed at a bit more of a distance. This will help keep your file size down as well and make them more manageable files I always work large graphics around 150-200 dpi.

Screen calibration and printing. Don't rely on it. Familiarize yourself with the inkdropper in photoshop and how percentages of ink print. Over time it becomes second nature anyways. It sounds like your monitor is whacky though. Either that or the printer. What device is producing this result for you?

At my new job we use FontReserve. I found Suitcase 10 to be a piece of crap that didn't play well with Adobe programs. Font Reserve seems a little moody with questionable fonts and doesn't like to activate them sometimes. All in all though, I experience no system or other software problems as a result of using this program. I can't say the same for Suitcase. I've also heard that ATM (Adobe Type Manager) is good, but have only used the classic version so can't vouch for it personally.

Oh yeah this is in 10.3.9 btw. Congrats on the new job. Hope that helps.

(Edited by Jeni on 08-03-2006 12:19)

Thanks guys...
Cpromt, most of the posters we do are vectorized so I think thats why they let Quark do the resizing. Problem is most of my expertise comes from photoshop. I tried the actual size method, even with 4gig of ram, it was still a little sluggish.

Jeni, Figured out that if I copy all the fonts to my local drive and setup my set in suitcase for the most part it's stable. I think the whole accessing the fonts on the network thing was screwing it up.

thanks...

God I'm answering old posts.... but you need Illustrator at that size, especially for print.

If you HAVE to do it in PS, you can always try doing it at half the size, then have the printer double it. I would do a test print first though. I did a huge banner when I really didn't know how, and I sent it in at 300dpi at 1/3 the size. It turned out OK, but that's really risky.

I would actually love to hear from people that do large scale graphics and hear what programs they use and how they get images into Illustrator, especially ones that you just have to design in PS.

If you look at the site on my banner, in the print section, you can see photos of large scale stuff that I totally got away with doing wrong.

Eight posts and a sig in 45 minutes, this inmate does have energy. Master Suho..? Ah.... right. I suppose taking care of it right here would be just fine.

*zzzzzzzap*

you need vector file to print.

Raster to Vector Conversion Service

Thanks, kuckus--I am in fact a bit backed up at the moment. But there's always room for one more test subject down in the basement.


___________________________
Suho: www.liminality.org | Cell 270 | Sig Rotator | the Fellowship of Sup

To post to a really old file again...who knows someone may revisit and find they answer they need.

I have had a fair bit of experience here though by no means an expert.

First off Vector is not required but if possible will always make things better. Vector vs Raster really depends on what it is you are designing. Text, Logos, non photographic design elements in most cases you want to keep vector as much as possible. The rub is if you use vector objects and try to apply a vector effect such as drop shadow or glow or anything that causes the use of transparency effects will not usually print correctly to and oversize printer. They cause strange boxes to appear around the containing object that the effect is assigned to. Sometimes they are just slightly discolored form the surrounding areas or simply all white or black. What do most printers do to fix this. They take it into Photoshop and flatten the who thing anyway so by by vector images. That's not necessarily an really bad thing. If it was designed to size and was done at a high enough resolution when flattened you probably won't notice too much difference. Sometimes the best thing if you need those effects or are using photographic elements is to work in Photoshop and cut vector objects from illustrator and paste them in Photoshop as vector smart objects then apply those effects in Photoshop.

As for size vs resolution. I am blessed at my work with a Mac 3.2 8 core system with 8 GB of ram(soon to be 16)and a 30 inch Apple display so I have done most of my large format stuff that was not all vector at full size and 300 DPI resolution. We print here on an Epson Stylus Pro 9600 which prints on up to 44" rolls of paper. On nice photo paper these look great however recently I have done some Very Large format trade show stuff that was 117 x 90 inches. This is far too large for us to print here and it prints directly onto a special material that we do not have the equipment for. So in working with the company that did print it I was given very specific instructions on submitting files. They deal only in large format most of it very large and I was told this if designing in photoshop. I can make it

Half size at 300 DPI or
Full size at 150 DPI

I went with the Full size option at 150 DPI and it looked great. Since then I have done a few other following that same advice and all been looked fine. We some places we outsource too that won't even take a 300 DPI large format file because it crashed their RIP. Vector is still great and if your design doesn't require anything but vector the resolution is not really a issue. You can design full size, half size, quarter size whatever it will scale perfectly but if you designing primarily in illustrator and need to mix in some Raster photo objects I recommend designing at full size but prepare your images to place in the file to be roughly the size you want them at 150 DPI.

This doesn't mean you can start with lower res images since you working in large format and most of the images provided to you by a customer are not going to be large high res images or even if using stock photos you still want to start with the highest resolution image you can get your hands on then open a new photo shop file that is the size you want it at 150DPI(for large format only) the open your provided art and drag the layer from one Photoshop file to the other. If your original was 300 dpi and you drag it into the 150 dpi file it will come in much larger to begin with and even more so if your original is 600 DPI. Then once you have it in the new file scale and crop as needed and save the new image as .jpg. yes I know .tif is king in print raster images and I agree but in large format you are trying to minimize file size as much as possible and .jpg is much more manageable and the trade in quality in this case I think is very small. However if your image is a composite that uses several layers you can either save a .jpg copy or especially if you think changes to the composite are a good possibility just pull in the .PSD In this case the file may be bigger but you may save some time in changes by being able to tweak the PSD and have the change update to your working file. You can however always make the change in the PSD and save another copy of the .jpg to update with. You just have to decide if you'd rather have the extra step or the smaller file.

thanks for the information above...

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(Edited by WebShaman on 10-29-2010 14:35)