My company has a logo created in Illustrator. They want me to provide our logo in black & white bmp format and resolution 10400 x 2760 x 8 bpp. How do I go about doing that? I’ve searched but I’m not getting a straight answer. Maybe I’m missing information…or I’m being given the wrong information.
The common wisdom would have you export to .bmp from Illustrator, but in my experience, Illustrator’s not great at raster-format export.
How I’d do it:
Assuming you also have Photoshop, launch it and create a new file at the pixel dimensions you were given and set the color mode to Grayscale. (I don’t know exactly what is meant by ‘black and white’. Without seeing your logo, I can only guess they want it either all black or in grayscale. For all black, just select all in Illustrator and fill with black; for grayscale, you have 2 options: 1) select all and choose Edit > Edit Colors > Convert to Grayscale, or, 2) just proceed as follows*.)
Back in Illustrator, select all and copy, then return to Photoshop and paste. Choose ‘pixels’ when prompted. If necessary, adjust the size and position of the pasted graphic on the Photoshop canvas, and commit by double-clicking or tapping Enter. Save as .bmp.
*If you copy color objects from Illustrator, pasting them onto a Grayscale Photoshop canvas will convert the colors to grayscale. If you’d like to exercise control over the conversion, do it element-by-element in Illustrator prior to copy/paste.
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HotButton’s instructions will get you what you need.
Just to clarify a couple of things: the “x 8” just means 8 bits per channel, which is what you will automatically get if you follow HotButton’s instructions. I’m assuming they really don’t mean “black & white” and that they really mean grayscale. Otherwise, they would not have asked for an 8-bit color depth.
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I’m actually not sure if they even want it in grayscale. All I was told is they need in black and white. Main name is in solid color, icon and rest of the logo are in gradient.
I tried out your suggestion, assuming in photoshop, I would keep the resolution at 300 pixels/inch correct? I would basically just change the canvas size and the color mode. I’ll be doing both color modes just in case. I really appreciate your help!
I figured out the whole “x 8” while searching for a “how to” but your input helps too! Thank you.
I dunno; they really didn’t give you enough info, although that’s not entirely surprising considering they requested .bmp format. At 300ppi, it’s gonna be over 35 inches wide and a whopper of a BMP file. What’s the output intent?
True, but even if they want all-black, grayscale would still be the correct mode to accommodate anti-aliasing.
Black and white to designers means just that, black and white (no grays). Most non-designers, when they say black and white actually mean grayscale. Your logo would not work in just black and white because of the tonal gradient in the drop of liquid. Anyway, it would still need to be grayscale because the edges of the curves need to be antialiased against the background in shades of gray or the image would be plagued with jaggies along those edges.
The ppi is irrelevant in this situation. That’s a physical measurement used for when images are output to something that can be measured in inches. They specified the pixel dimensions, which is all you need. As long as it’s those pixel dimensions, it really makes no difference what the ppi might be.
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lol they didn’t give me the output info either smh…I’m here driving myself crazy. It’s hard to communicate with them because their main office is in Germany and I’m here in Miami. Time difference sucks.
You beat me to it. 
Honest, between HotButton and me, we’ve been doing this stuff for close to, um, 300 or 400 years now.
Do exactly like HotButton suggested and you will have given them exactly what they asked for. Really.
There might be very specific circumstances where they might want black and white, but them asking for an 8-bit color depth rules that out. They gave you no information concerning ppi, which indicates that it’s not a relevant concern, which I would have told you was likely the case anyway since they gave you specific pixel dimensions.
Thank you for explaining…helps a lot. Ya’ll are awesome! I honestly didn’t think I was going to get a quick response. I went to school for graphic design years ago and this is the first time since then that I’m actually using it. Sooo I do have a lot to learn!
Just a few caveats (just in case).
As HotButton implied, they might not know exactly what they really need. First, .bmp is a Microsoft format from the past that is not often used for many professional-level purposes. Second, they want a raster format of a vector logo, which again, is hardly ever needed for anything except by those who don’t quite understand how vector imagery works.
They also gave you no information regarding output, so you have no way of knowing what the ppi should be set at if, in fact, they wanted it set to something specific. Like I mentioned, I wouldn’t worry about it. Also, this is going to be one whopping large file — probably 20 megabytes or so. If you convert straight to grayscale the purple type will come out a dark gray, but it would probably be better if it were black. Then again, they didn’t ask you to convert the type to black. Asking for a “black and white” image is not the same as asking you to convert the type to black, then sending them an 8-bit, grayscale image.
In other words, they didn’t give you enough information for you to be totally sure of what they need. As I mentioned, I suspect they might not really know either (either that or they’ve got some sort of specialized or proprietary setup that requires a gigantic raster file). If you send them what we’ve suggested, though, you will have given them what they asked for. If they come back and ask you to change something, at least you’ll know how to respond back about needing more specific information. You can always ask here too.
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Clear communication about graphics jobs requires careful language. I do my best to avoid the ambiguity that comes from use of that term when referring to anything but old movies and TV’s. Whenever I talk about color, it’s either “on screen/RGB” or ink-based; i.e., black-only, spot color, CMYK, etc. Terms like “full color” and “black & white” never communicate anything useful.
Thank you for solving, because I met the same problem.
Two year old thread …
Closing.