Customer artwork 110 GB!

[Pat Whatley]

Guy walks in the door with an external hard drive under his arm and says he needs some printing done.

Then he asks how good my computers are because his file is 110 GB. He hasn't even seen it, his "designer" saved it for him and he can't find anyone who can open it.

Who in the hell saves a file for a 3' x 30' banner at 110 GB?! Can you even save a file at 110 GB? I think my computer would melt down if I tried something like that.

 

[p3]

Oh man. The place I worked at before we had a guy come in with same thing. LOL. said he had been working on this project over the last 3 years and had to call it quits cause his computer couldn't handle it anymore. He wanted to print a wall mural. I said man, you didn't think about doing this to scale in and sections? he started laughing and said, never crossed my mind. I was just like you were going to keep upgrading hard drives? what happens when you got over 2 TB LOL.

 

[mikey-Oh]

think you need to go bigger

 

[rfulford]

Ask any kid straight out of school. They will tell you that when you design for print all art must be CMYK and 300 ppi. Then ask them about bleed in a file and you will get a blank stare.

I have a number of customers that insist on setting everything up at 300ppi. I constantly get Indesign files with placed layered photoshop images. 3-5 gb for a 30"x40" flatbed prints. I thought I would do them a favor and let them know they could design at 150 ppi and have 1/4 the file size but the 300 ppi stuff just keeps on coming. I guess they get paid by the hour.

 

[SignBurst PCs]

LOL... sounds like a job created on one of our computers.

I tell my customers, "just because you can doesn't mean you should". I get calls about files that customers have created on one of our design computers. Sometimes they do something odd, like up the resolution and it creates an abnormally large file. Because the computer is fast enough to keep up with the file, they don't immediately notice their error. Eventually they try to RIP it and the RIP software pukes.

 

[wetgravy]

10 to 1 says it's a photoshop file at 600 dpi with about 350 layers. Only way to get that large on something that small.

 

[SebastienL]

I think that's impossible. I checked in Photoshop: 30' x 36" @ 300dpi with one layer would create a 3G file. Largest I worked with was 4G and it took more than 5 minutes to save.It was a 30' x 9' mural @60 dpi. It was the layered working file, not the file I printed from.

If one of our sales rep would ask me to open a file he knew was 110G, I would laugh in is face and tell him he's freaking out of is mind!

Seriously, I'd send the customer back to his "designer" and tell him to tell his "designer" to give me a call so I can try and educate said "designer" in proper final file set-up for printing puposes...

 

[SignManiac]

Damn, that should be a nice print at 1200 dpi

 

[rfulford]

I think it might be fun to call tech support and tell them about the trouble you are having ripping a 110 GB file.

 

[joeshaul]

Expect it more with technology, in 15 years time, it'll be "it's only 110 gig, I asked for a high res graphic file! what'd they take it with, my grandpa's 'blackberry'?".

 

[visual800]

must have been from an ad agency.

 

[jc1cell]

must have been from an ad agency.

 

[mark galoob]

this is so true...i get customer files from "graphic designers" all the time. what a joke. these so called "graphic designers" are morons who have no clue what goes on in a print environment. the funny thing is people actually pay them a premium for their services...

mark galoob

 

[copythat]

Pat

I've seen those too many times. Client thinks they are designers, come in with PSD files. My biggest was 8 gb file for a 4' x 20' banner. And we still had to fix the file!

Love what SignBurst posted! : )


sounds like a job created on one of our computers.

I want one of their units. The "Extreme"




Sign Up!

 

[TheSnowman]

Expect it more with technology, in 15 years time, it'll be "it's only 110 gig, I asked for a high res graphic file! what'd they take it with, my grandpa's 'blackberry'?".

Ha...so true. I remember probably 12 years ago my cousin was doing video editing for several local TV stations commercials, and he told me he had a 240 gig hard drive, and 2 gig of ram. I said, no way man...it's not even possible. The tower was the biggest thing I'd ever seen a computer in, and I now own that "super computer". It's been in my closet collecting dust for years.

 

[Marlene]

well it's either 110 GB or 2MB, not sure which is worse.

 

[Rooster]

It's probably an illustrator eps file with a ton of raster images embedded into the file. They can get huge in a hurry.

I usually just pre-rip something like that into photoshop at a lower resolution and work with the smaller file.

 

[gabagoo]

man, it would be one thing to open it, just imagine ripping it and then after 3 weeks trying to save it

 

[heyskull]

Look at it this way it could be a lot worse......
The customer brings in a 2KB file and wants a 3'x30' banner printed from it!!!!
Believe it I have had that customer and they were serious about the artwork.

SC

 

[Pat Whatley]

It's probably an illustrator eps file with a ton of raster images embedded into the file.

]

That's my guess. When I talked to him about this job a couple of weeks ago he was looking for a banner covered in pictures of sports equipment and game images as a giant collage he could hang above the lockers in the locker room. I told him the art charge would be $120 plus the cost of the photos....I estimated around $200 total for the design. He said he had somebody who could do it for him for free.

I'm guessing somebody set up the lettering in Illustrator and then just swiped 50 Google images for the pics.

I didn't even bother even plugging in the hard drive. I told him to just have his designer call me Monday.