• I want to thank all the members that have upgraded your accounts. I truly appreciate your support of the site monetarily. Supporting the site keeps this site up and running as a lot of work daily goes on behind the scenes. Click to Support Signs101 ...

Raster and Vector Image Customer Rant

mfatty500

New Member
I can only say one thing canva.com !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Four times today I have issues with files from Canva.
This is making people think they are designers but certainly is not helping us the signmakers/large format printers.

SC
And then they tell you, oh it doesn't have to be exact, just something close....:mad:
 

Stacey K

I like making signs
Rant: I've received my annual FB message from my cousin looking for "2 can coozies", "2 beach towels with blue and white stripes with a full color boating logo with The Grateful Dead logo and his boat name" and some other crap she wants printed for Christmas. I just told her to check online. I sure as heck am not wasting my time making 2 coozies, 2 beach towels, 2 of this and 2 of that. Good grief. Don't hear from her all year until she needs these ridiculous presents. Rant over LOL
 
If it is a recurring issue that's bothering you, add a $50 setup charge for all new logos vector or not. Send the bitmaps to the vector doctor or trace them yourself. You'll have it done before they even find the right file and your expense is covered.
And charge more if the original graphic has a gradient they want to keep. It costs more to reproduce in vector form.
 

The Vector Doctor

Chief Bezier Manipulator
gradients can be tough to match. There are lots of variables such as direction, starting and ending point colors and some have other color stops at various points along the gradient with different color values
 

Geneva Olson

Expert Storyteller
A customer bought a sublimated tent from me recently. He told me that he was going to have his graphic designer mockup the tent. I sent over the template so that he could mock it up. About 5 minutes later I got a call from the graphic designer who told me he was in over his head. He said he works in canva and does web design. He said he taught himself everything he knows and he realized he was way in over his head. I told him, yea, graphic design for printing is much different than a website. We have to have clean artwork because we are creating something tangible. websites are virtual graphics. The lightbulb suddenly went on for him. Needless to say, I did the artwork for the tent.
 

Stacey K

I like making signs
A customer bought a sublimated tent from me recently. He told me that he was going to have his graphic designer mockup the tent. I sent over the template so that he could mock it up. About 5 minutes later I got a call from the graphic designer who told me he was in over his head. He said he works in canva and does web design. He said he taught himself everything he knows and he realized he was way in over his head. I told him, yea, graphic design for printing is much different than a website. We have to have clean artwork because we are creating something tangible. websites are virtual graphics. The lightbulb suddenly went on for him. Needless to say, I did the artwork for the tent.
You should have given him an award for actually being so smart! They don't usually admit such things, impressive!
 

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
The Vector Doctor said:
gradients can be tough to match. There are lots of variables such as direction, starting and ending point colors and some have other color stops at various points along the gradient with different color values

Yeah, gradients can be a real can of worms. Normal linear or spherical gradients can be enough of a pain. I wish the Gradient Annotator in Adobe Illustrator worked more like the one in CorelDRAW. The one in CorelDRAW is a lot easier to control. You can snap either end of a linear gradient to other objects or guidelines. I have to fight with the one in Illustrator to get the results I want. In recent years Illustrator and CorelDRAW have added the capability to skew and distort gradients. So that's another variable that's tough to match.

Gradient meshes got added to Illustrator in the late 1990's. Freeform gradients were added just a few years ago. Both can be extremely difficult (and time consuming) to match accurately.

DL Signs said:
I used to too... Then I started using Affinity. It makes doing gradients and masking with blurs for those hard to hit ones so easy, and it's all live preview so you can adjust & tweak things as you go and see what's changing as you change it.

I'll agree it's very easy to edit gradients in Affinity Designer. The on-object "annotator" (Illustrator's term) is very easy to adjust, much more so than the one in Illustrator. Affinity Designer even supports conical gradients, while Illustrator does not.

But Affinity Designer doesn't have as many adjustment parameters on the gradient types it supports. For instance, you can change an elliptical gradient to a non-uniform aspect ratio, but you can't also skew the fill like you can in CorelDRAW or Illustrator. Affinity Designer doesn't support Gradient Meshes or Freeform Gradients. That can be a problem when importing certain kinds of Adobe Illustrator-generated artwork.
 

Stacey K

I like making signs
My favorite is when I tell them I can victories their logo for $50, then they send me 1 email a day for the next 2 weeks with a different low resolution raster image asking if this logo will work and save them the $50 charge.

Even better when it's a large company and the person you're dealing with isn't the owner, so you're left scratching your head trying to figure out why they spent $300 in time to save $50...
THIS. THIS RIGHT HERE!!!!!
 

Geneva Olson

Expert Storyteller
You should have given him an award for actually being so smart! They don't usually admit such things, impressive!
well, the reason why he did was because he's not a graphic artist. He's somebody who learned how to design websites and thought he did a decent job at creating their logo.
 

Eforcer

Sign Up!
This is getting stupid with customers now.
How can I educate customers with the Raster and Vector?!!!
Sadly everybody and there dog is a designer now with all these online designing apps everyone is an expert.

HELP.......

SC
There is no point to educate clients these days. I also do t-shirts. I get canva files and get the client tells me "It looks great" On their cell phones. I tell them. Fortunately, I offer retouching services for a fee. But I already paid canva. SMH Education process has gone to &hit!
 

gnubler

Active Member
My favorite is when I tell them I can victories their logo for $50, then they send me 1 email a day for the next 2 weeks with a different low resolution raster image asking if this logo will work and save them the $50 charge.

Even better when it's a large company and the person you're dealing with isn't the owner, so you're left scratching your head trying to figure out why they spent $300 in time to save $50...
I'm dealing with this now for a school district, it's been going on for months. I finally received vector logos for all the schools and then they decided a couple needed to be updated...so then I get the usual low-res JPG/PNG and ten emails back & forth..."Is this one good enough? How about this one?". They have these logo files coming from all different directions, one of them was "designed" by a principal who has since resigned so they can't find original files. Whatta cluster...
 

Bobby H

Arial Sucks.
It's always fun to get a PNG image from a customer with the file name changed to include the word "vector," as if typing that nonsense is enough to fix the problem.
 

CanuckSigns

Active Member
It's always fun to get a PNG image from a customer with the file name changed to include the word "vector," as if typing that nonsense is enough to fix the problem.
Make sure when you send them a proof you call it "front_sign_proof_easy_and_profitable_customer.png" when they ask tell them you're using the same hope and a prayer file naming system they are.
 
Top