• 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 ...

Superlarge banner saving tips

U

UnlimitedBT

New Member
Hi guys. I had an order placed by one of the customers.... it is 17 feet by 91 feet. Huge! They gave me 4 files expected me to combine them in one canvas on order specified (yeah, their designer did not want to bother with actually finishing the project so me finishing his job and actually doing mine was the best/easiest thing to do) and have that whole thing printed. Problem started with 4over as it could not be higher than 16 feet. We had negotiated that - as there was no other choice. The real problem came with file itself as PDF can't be longer that 200 inches.
I had to make those 4 files 5.6 time smaller in dimension and bump up the resolution by 6. They came to be 1Gb, 1.3Gb, 1.35Gb, 0.5Gb and all that was placed on one canvas in Adobe Illustrator, boy was that computer turning red! I mean it is nice PC, Core I7 Nehalem processor with 16Gb or Ram and SSD hard drive but it took awfully long to place each part and i could not save as Ia file or PDF, I had to Print to Adobe PDF...
Is there easier way to do this? I understand that dimensional limit will be there regardless but should I had done assembly in Photoshop and save as Jpeg? Is there a file type that has no dimensional limits or with those significantly higher that PDF?
Thanks in advance.
Roman.
 
Pat Whatley

Pat Whatley

New Member
At that kind of size how far is the viewing distance? You can drop billboards down into the 50 DPI and it's overkill, they still look perfect from the 100 yard viewing distance.

Biggest problem I see is that you're using 4over to print it the job.
 
P

player

New Member
TIFF files don't have a size limit do they?

JPG files discard info when they are saved. This is called lossy.
 
T

tree32

New Member
Out Source It!!!

If you have not printed this, save yourself time, equipment and the risk of messing up the seams. I highly recommend that you outsource it! I recommend a massive printer called circle graphics. They print all types of sizes, but specialize in large format prints. They print jobs like this by the hundreds. This would be easy for them and the turnaround is fast... talking days

As for file size you can try saving as a PSB (PSD big brother) or as a tiff. These are designed for large files like the one your working in. If it keeps crashing, try flattening finished sections and effects, those can eat up the ram. You can also go into preferences in photoshop and increase the percentage of ram you will let it use (70%-80% should be plenty). Keep in mind, it wont use all of this all the time, but will let photoshop tap into more memory when it needs it. Like your huge files.

As for the resolution try working in a size like 8.5"X 45.5" @ 408ppi CMYK resolution. When the printer gets this flattened file, they will scale it up and rip it to the printer at 17ft X 91ft @ 56 ppi. This resolution will be more than enough for what your doing.

I used to work in pre-press for a billboard company, and currently work next door to one of circle graphics's printing facilities. They print most, if not all of CBS, Clear Channel, and Lamar billboards. I see and deal with these daily.

Check em out, you will be glad you did.
http://www.circlegraphicsonline.com
 
visual800

visual800

Active Member
Why is this damn thing so long where is it going. You need to dump 4over and send to a billboard printer and low resolution
 
U

UnlimitedBT

New Member
Thanks TXFB.INS but that is a long list mixed with service and supplies providers, any one or few you could recommend close to NY preferably...
Thanks in advance.
 
U

UnlimitedBT

New Member
visual800 said:
Why is this damn thing so long where is it going. You need to dump 4over and send to a billboard printer and low resolution
Click to expand...
Hi It is so long for two reasons: Customer asked me to and because customer asked me to. It goes inside of sports club where tennis courts are. I would not want to artificially jackdown the resolution to keep the quality as high as possible, I mean, aside handing over to the customer a 1500 sq. feet of banner material I want to receive a $3500 payment and not being ask "why does it look like crap"
 
visual800

visual800

Active Member
UnlimitedBT said:
Hi It is so long for two reasons: Customer asked me to and because customer asked me to. It goes inside of sports club where tennis courts are
Click to expand...


Thank you sir. See now we know how it is to be used and not stck in a cow pasture 300 yds off the road.

Secondly we had a map of alabama printed and it was the size of a basketball court, no lie. We sent the printer 6 diffrent files overlaps of about a foot and let them put them together it worked out great. IMO 1 gb files are ridiculousy high. Im not understand why you cannot save in AI. AIwould be your best bet for resolution and size. And whatever you do dragging this over to PS will blow the computer up. I dont know what PS does to files but it seems to cause more issues than good.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top