I’ve got to drop an .eps logo onto a 6m-wide banner. As far as I can gather thus far, InDesign only allows one to go up to 216 inches, and recommendation is that you do the file at 50% or 25% and scale up.
The original .eps of the logo is tiny - about 2 inches - and I am to Illustrator what Greg Wallace is to jazz piano, so while I’ve tried to make the logo absolutely massive, when I drop it into the InDesign file it looks absolutely horrible. This - understandably - translates to the .pdf if I export it.
Can any of you explain to me how I overcome this, and assume that I have a head injury when you do so? I would be most grateful.
So, you’re opening it in Illustrator to make it bigger? If so, you need to determine there (in Illustrator) whether the file contains vectors, raster data, or both (EPS can include any combination). You would do that by checking the Layers panel with the logo selected. If it’s all or part raster, it would be best to seek out a vector version, which should exist if it was competently designed.
I have no idea who Greg Wallace is, but I’ll assume he knows nothing about jazz or playing the piano.
Just to reinforce what HotButton said, an EPS file can contain vector or raster data. Vector data is scalable without loss of resolution. Raster data will get blurry when enlarged. In other words, raster data can look terrible when it’s scaled up.
If the logo is getting blurry as you enlarge it, my guess is that the logo contains raster data. However, it’s not quite that simple. If you’re placing it into InDesign, you might just be enlarging a low-resolution preview version, even though the file itself contains vector data. Saving it to a PDF and seeing the same blurry image sort of points to it being raster data.
Unfortunately, if the logo is composed of raster data, you’re out of luck. There’s no way to enlarge it without it getting blurry. Do you have a copy of Illustrator or another vector graphics drawing application? If you open it in Illustrator and click on it, is the logo editable with anchor points, curves, paths, and other control elements? If not, the logo is probably a raster file. (For what it’s worth building logos in a raster program is usually a terrible idea, partly for this very reason.)
As for the banner size, when working with larger formats, building them at a 10:1 ratio is common (it keeps the math simple). When printed out, printers will enlarge them by ten times. However, when doing it this way, it’s also important that any raster data has a resolution ten times larger, so it’ll be the right resolution when printed out. As for the appropriate resolution of raster data for big banner, that’s another tangent that would deserve another two or three paragraphs.
Yes, sort of, although it depends on the PDF export settings, which could be mishandled to rasterize vectors at low resolution. So the scenario, as set forth by the OP, has several layers of unknown potential for failure.
At first glance, questions like the OP posted seem straightforward, but then there’s this exception or that possibility or this or that might happen depending on whatever happened between here and there and whether it occurred on Tuesday or Thursday. The response spirals off into a bunch of tangents, which confuses the main answer with a bunch of hard-to-follow jargon that might or might not be relevant — sort of.
.eps in InDesign can look like crap in standard view. Turn up the screen preview to High Quality Display and see what you get. View > Display Performance or somewhere near there. Or better yet, print out a piece of it.
I see where the OP is saying it translates to the PDF, that could be a whole different can of worms if the view changes to good on the screen.
I’m more betting it is a PHotoslop .eps file. Happens all the time.
Today I was, once again, given a .ai file with a raster image embedded in it. Some people should have their computers taken away.
