Exporting as a tif

[ndemond]

My billboard designer is out of town for the week.
10' x 24' billboard created in Corel X4 designed as 10" x 24".
2 jpg portraits one with a shadow and some text with outlines.
The company I use to print these boards request a .tif with LZW compression.
I scaled it down to 50% as the file was 45megs. The tif file I uploaded after compression was about 2.5 megs. I received the proof yesterday and the image is pixelated and not acceptable.
He usually performs all these tasks for me as I am not familiar with the
exporting function for print.

Did I miss a step in Corel before export.?
All lines are converted.
Should I convert to bitmap then export.?
Did resizing do this.?
Should I rebuild the whole thing as 120" x 288" then resize?

I do know the photo's were scanned in at 200dpi touched up, background removed and resaved as jpg and imported back into corel.

I would wait till next week, but ...it has to be done yesterday.

Thank you, Nancy

 

[Checkers]

It sounds like your images are too small and/or you reduced the resolution too much somewhere along the way. At a minimum, I would suggest a resolution of 32 dpi at the finished size, which would mean it would be approximately 400 dpi when it's reduced. Ideally, a higher resolution would be better.
Here's the specs that my billboard printer recommends...
In order to ensure the highest quality of work and faster turnaround time, we ask that you make sure to follow the few simple guidelines below:

1. Create all layouts at 600 dpi, scale: 1/4'' = 1'
2. Scan all images at 600 dpi
3. Include pantone coated colors, for spot colors
4. Include a fonts; postscripts, Suitcase, True Type, etc...
5. Make sure to include ALL images

Examples for sizing purposes: If your board is a 14' x 48', you should create your file 3.5''x 12'' at 600 dpi. If your board is a 6' x 12', you should create your file 1.5'' x 3'' at 600 dpi.

Checkers

 

[Morph1]

the trick is to have a full size image between 80 - 150 dpi and it all depends how far away you're going to view it from , I usually set it up in Adobe photoshop at quater size working at between 400 and 600 dpi,
4'x8' print I would set up 12" x 24" at 400 dpi should be sufficient ...,
it also depends of the scanned image quality , you can scan it at whatever dpi but if the image is crappy or small it will still look crappy regardless the dpi assigned.

Hope this helps !

Cheers

 

[ndemond]

Thanks to all, rebuilt it and rescanned. Perfect


Nancy

 

[anotherdog]

wind back the clock a bit we screen printed billboards at 12 dpi or even less