Ooph. I’ve had enough trouble with SVG when it’s appropriate (on-screen rendering in responsive layouts), that I’d never even consider it for anything else.
Yes, please do. If there’s an effective way to enlarge raster images without degrading the quality, well, this could be pretty useful.
I use a light weight app called PhotoZoom Pro 7 it’s amazing for all sorts of enlarging situations. supports multi platforms and is rather inexpensive. Made by BenVista software has 12 configurable logarithms for enlarging/reducing and altering resolution etc…
I don’t mean svg. I am having a mental block. It’s the one for large format printers.
I’m having a senior moment. I can’t remember the format I meant. It’s exclusively for large-format printers.
I’m actually just building it in Illustrator with embedded jpegs. (I don’t have to worry about image degeneration since it’s a one-off.)
There is no format exclusively for large format. Nope none.
If by any chance you mean .psb format (not talking .psd here, think b as in bloated) there are very very very few instances where that is acceptable. If you are using psb your are probably doing it wrong.
You best be following your vendor’s specs. Most do not want embedded images. Most don’t want PDFs.
Most do want critical colors as Pantone coated, text outlined and images linked not embedded.
You do have to worry about image degeneration. If those jpgs suck, they will suck bigger when enlarged.
Are you sure? I mean I could be having a false memory, but I could swear I was taught to save for large format specifically. I guess it could have been a preference that the print house we used wanted and I’m just 'membring wrong.
Am I sure? Uh, yeah.
What format were you “taught” to save in?
Like I said .psb is rare.
.psd and .tif are most common for placed images.
Most often the “large format” design is created in a layout program and submitted as native .ai or .indd, rarely PDF outside the online gang printers. There’s a whole section of broadcast industry that prints from tifs. Most often though it is Illustrator .ai, even though it isn’t at all suited to handling large imagery over 500mb. InDesign is better for most things, IMO, because of the low rez preview and the color control, but that too is up to the output house.
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I don’t remember then.
It’s done though so if you want to remove this thread it’s cool.
We don’t typically remove threads without a good reason. This one contains good information, so let’s leave it.
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Right on. I remembered that we used PDF not svg (derp.).
This was back in the day when Quark XPress was standard and we had to “Print to file” to save a PDF correctly. That’s what was throwing me off. It was just a false memory.
I will let you all know how it turned out after the Spring trade show early April. That will be the first time I will see the finished setup.
You had to print to Postscript and then Distill to get a proper PDF out of Quark back then.
And you had to save any placed images as a Photoshop .eps in order to get all the scaling info to come over too.
That last part might be what you are remembering.
It’s not like that any more.
I believe you. you’ve always had good info here. We’re talking (holy moly) 25 years ago?! When did I get OLD!!!
You are right in saying that the actual size is a pixel count, but dpi is just a measure of how many dots the printer actually places per inch. So it’s just a simple math equation.
So here:
8’ x 10’ image @ 100dpi
EQUALS 8 x 12 (inches) x 100 BY 10 x 12 (inches) x 100
OR: 9600dpi x 12000dpi for full coverage.
25 years. Yup. That’s about right.
Actually it’s PPI. Pixels per inch in Photoshop.
DPI is the ink dot screen your printer puts down. Most of the machines I use might want 100ppi for images but will print at 600dpi, or better on output. If you do 100dpi on a banner machine there will be actual visible dots and looks absolutely awful under 20ft of viewing distance. Most billboards are done at 300dpi or better. If I can find it, I’ll scan my print sample that shows what the dot pattern looks like at 100. Might be gone though. I consider that unsaleable.
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The first time I saw that trick I was like “no… can’t be.” But it really does work in increments so much better.
In the end I am very happy with the end product.
For anyone still paying any attention, I just used the newest enlargement beta algorithm from Adobe in Photoshop and it worked fantastically in 1 step.
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One more thing.
THANK YOU ALL VERY MUCH. No matter how much I learn I always know there is a whole lotta mo-betta out there, and this is a great place for information.