Why would the file size be so big?

[myront]

Got a request from a client for pop-up banners. Banners are approx. 36"w x 80"h. They have their own art department to create the designs. That's all fine just convert the fonts and save as pdf.
Get a call a week or so later from the artist. "How do you want these files sent, they're 2GB"
What the holy hell! Why? I don't want to insult anybody but WHY!
I design full wraps for tractor trailers and the file size rarely exceeds 800MB.
Told 'em to scale them down to 1/4 size to see if that helps. I haven't been given any of 'em yet though.
Maybe designing in photoshop at full scale and 300dpi? Still don't think it'd make 2GB though.
Maybe multiple raster images at 600dpi on 50 different layers? Just save as a flattened tiff already!

 

[Solventinkjet]

I took 4 years of graphic design courses and they never went over file size or file creation techniques. If it looked good, that's all that mattered. It wasn't until I worked at a sign shop that I learned just how inefficient my files were. My guess is not only high res raster images on multiple layers but also no use of compression either. A lot of people are afraid to compress raster images thinking it will lower the quality when in reality you can't even tell the difference with modern compression.

 

[richsweeney]

You are right, they most likely built this in Photoshop. Have them, not you, save it as a optimized PDF. That might help.

 

[CanuckSigns]

I'm guessing they have 20+ high resolution images off to the side of their art board from previous revisions that are no longer needed, we get this somewhat often from "designers"

 

[AKwrapguy]

Most likely something they built in Photoshop.
If it were me, I would ask them to save it to 150dpi, and export/save as a .pdf file. In the options you can save as I think 'high quality press'. Select the box to make it not editable and than save. It should bring it down the file size substantially.

 

[ikarasu]

Am I the only one who'd love a 2 GB file? Space is nearly unlimited. It takes under 30 seconds to dl 2 GB, and we can. Upload / share via Google drive.

Ripping isn't bad if you're on an SSD. I always tell our clients the highest quality / original file that you've got, and we'll make changes on our end. Again... It'll take a minute or two to compress / flatten if we want. Better to have the original and save it to our settings / specs rather than have some guy export to 72 dpi in illustrator because that's somehow the default when you hit export!

Now when you get a 2 GB file and it's filled with the most pixelated shit you've ever seen... That's when it gets annoying.

 

[netsol]

Am I the only one who'd love a 2 GB file? Space is nearly unlimited. It takes under 30 seconds to dl 2 GB, and we can. Upload / share via Google drive.

Ripping isn't bad if you're on an SSD. I always tell our clients the highest quality / original file that you've got, and we'll make changes on our end. Again... It'll take a minute or two to compress / flatten if we want. Better to have the original and save it to our settings / specs rather than have some guy export to 72 dpi in illustrator because that's somehow the default when you hit export!

Now when you get a 2 GB file and it's filled with the most pixelated **** you've ever seen... That's when it gets annoying.

exactly what i was thinking.
it's easier to work that way,than to recreate everything because you were sent nothing but pixelated garbage

 

[victor bogdanov]

What's the problem with 2GB?

 

[Superior_Adam]

if it is a Photoshop file tell them to flatten the files and send you a .tiff. We do a lot of contract printing and rarely are fonts converted to curves/outlines and the files are huge. I simply open in Photoshop flatten and send it to the printer. Files print just fine.

 

[CanuckSigns]

Am I the only one who'd love a 2 GB file? Space is nearly unlimited. It takes under 30 seconds to dl 2 GB, and we can. Upload / share via Google drive.

Ripping isn't bad if you're on an SSD. I always tell our clients the highest quality / original file that you've got, and we'll make changes on our end. Again... It'll take a minute or two to compress / flatten if we want. Better to have the original and save it to our settings / specs rather than have some guy export to 72 dpi in illustrator because that's somehow the default when you hit export!

Now when you get a 2 GB file and it's filled with the most pixelated **** you've ever seen... That's when it gets annoying.

I dont think the issue is the file size itself, but 2 GB for a retractable banner stand should raise a few red flags about the designers common sense. As someone else posted you can design an entire tractor trailer wrap under 1gb that prints beautifully, if a designer doesn't see that file size and think "oh shit what did I do" something is wrong.

 

[brdesign]

I took 4 years of graphic design courses and they never went over file size or file creation techniques. If it looked good, that's all that mattered. It wasn't until I worked at a sign shop that I learned just how inefficient my files were. My guess is not only high res raster images on multiple layers but also no use of compression either. A lot of people are afraid to compress raster images thinking it will lower the quality when in reality you can't even tell the difference with modern compression.

When I was in design school we had to learn how to keep file sizes down because you can't fit much information on 3.5" floppy discs. The 100mb Zip disks were a game changer.

 

[Bobby H]

Am I the only one who'd love a 2 GB file? Space is nearly unlimited.

I'll only like a 2GB art file if the artwork has the details, native resolution, etc to warrant eating up such a giant footprint of disc space. When it comes to customer-provided artwork, that is almost never the case. The fat files are usually the result of someone not knowing what he's doing. One common thing is people using Photoshop for simple graphics jobs when they could have used Illustrator (or CorelDRAW) to generate the same exact thing, but at a tiny fraction of the file size. "But I'm only used to using Photoshop; that's what I prefer"

Also storage space is still limited. That is unless someone deletes all the art files they receive or create after finishing the project. If anything is going to be archived then storage space is still at a premium. It's a lot easier to back-up or migrate volumes of art files that were created with good discipline and a good sense of organization. Backing up or migrating a trash heap of piggy files is a real pain.

Far too many computer users don't even know how to use Windows File Explorer or the Finder in MacOS. I first started using computers in middle school in the 1980's, machines like the RadioShack TRS-80, Apple II and the original IBM PC. We were having to organize files using a command line on a monochrome screen. The only thing one saw on the black screen were lines of white or green type and a flashing cursor waiting for your next move. With modern operating systems it's so much easier now to name, re-name files and folders as well as keep them organized. People don't bother to learn. And I have zero sympathy for that. It's just pure laziness and ignorance. They only start making an effort to learn when they lose a bunch of valuable files in a hard drive crash or their PC gets hosed by malware. All too often they want someone like me to come fix their $#!+ and back-up/save their files for them when disaster strikes.

 

[ikarasu]

I dont think the issue is the file size itself, but 2 GB for a retractable banner stand should raise a few red flags about the designers common sense. As someone else posted you can design an entire tractor trailer wrap under 1gb that prints beautifully, if a designer doesn't see that file size and think "oh **** what did I do" something is wrong.

True, and I'm sure everyone's clientele is different... But 99.9% of the time the people sending us the files aren't the graphics artists.

So you ask your client to set it up a certain way, they talk to their graphics department or external graphics designer... They make a few changes and then send you back a 1.8 GB file now you've wasted 2 days of production and they still expect the banner stand by Friday.

If it's an artist you work with often I can see explaining how to setup files, usually that will be us setting it up to our spec...sending it back and saying this is how we prefer files - better as a show and tell.

 

[ikarasu]

I'll only like a 2GB art file if the artwork has the details, native resolution, etc to warrant eating up such a giant footprint of disc space. When it comes to customer-provided artwork, that is almost never the case. The fat files are usually the result of someone not knowing what he's doing. One common thing is people using Photoshop for simple graphics jobs when they could have used Illustrator (or CorelDRAW) to generate the same exact thing, but at a tiny fraction of the file size. "But I'm only used to using Photoshop; that's what I prefer"

Also storage space is still limited. That is unless someone deletes all the art files they receive or create after finishing the project. If anything is going to be archived then storage space is still at a premium. It's a lot easier to back-up or migrate volumes of art files that were created with good discipline and a good sense of organization. Backing up or migrating a trash heap of piggy files is a real pain.

Far too many computer users don't even know how to use Windows File Explorer or the Finder in MacOS. I first started using computers in middle school in the 1980's, machines like the RadioShack TRS-80, Apple II and the original IBM PC. We were having to organize files using a command line on a monochrome screen. The only thing one saw on the black screen were lines of white or green type and a flashing cursor waiting for your next move. With modern operating systems it's so much easier now to name, re-name files and folders as well as keep them organized. People don't bother to learn. And I have zero sympathy for that. It's just pure laziness and ignorance. They only start making an effort to learn when they lose a bunch of valuable files in a hard drive crash or their PC gets hosed by malware. All too often they want someone like me to come fix their $#!+ and back-up/save their files for them when disaster strikes.

Lets say every file you get is 2 GB. from a cheap 24 x 24 coro sign to a big wall mural. a 10 TB HD is $170 - thats 5,000 2 GB files that will fit onto that hd. Space is technically finite... but at the price of TB's these days, its not much!

Ontop of that theres a ton of cloud providers... like google, for $15 a month you can backup as much space as you want. (I'm nearing a PB... ) we never delete anything, and TBH Having it on google makes searching for old artwork so much easier since it uses googles search algorithm.

I see it this way. We're in the production industry - Theyre in the graphic industry. They were taught how to setup eye catching graphics that will catch peoples attention... Thats their main function. Ours is to produce said graphics - In a perfect world the jobs would work together and compliment eachother / make eachothers lives easier - in realty...if you ask 90% of graphics designers to setup a file for say offset printing most will look dumbfounded. Its very, very rare graphics designers send print ready files that are setup perfectly and need no modifications... unless they always work with print shops. So most of the time we're going in and tweaking bleeds or fixing something anyways.

I don't mind super large files, so much as I mind having to go in and add bleed / crops because they setup a 24 x 36 sign on a 24 x 36 artboard. Especially when its got a ton of gradients so adding bleeds is a pain in the ass... Theres so many other things that are way worst than a 2 GB File to me.

 

[CanuckSigns]

True, and I'm sure everyone's clientele is different... But 99.9% of the time the people sending us the files aren't the graphics artists.

So you ask your client to set it up a certain way, they talk to their graphics department or external graphics designer... They make a few changes and then send you back a 1.8 GB file now you've wasted 2 days of production and they still expect the banner stand by Friday.

If it's an artist you work with often I can see explaining how to setup files, usually that will be us setting it up to our spec...sending it back and saying this is how we prefer files - better as a show and tell.

Very true.

A few weeks ago we had a client want some new signs designed, told them we would be about 2 weeks to get her proofs due to our workload, so she is having her "designer" do them, she had me send her the logos etc, so I put them all into a vector pdf and emailed them, got a reply back asking for me to separate each logo into its own .png file, aparently she can't work with vector files.... I'm dreading the files I get from her to print, especially since there are some fairly intricate contour cuts.

 

[myront]

Ticks me off that they probably make way more $$ than me too! Usually when a client says they had a designer do something for them and I find out that they don't have a vector or at least a higher res file, I tell the client they should fire the designer!

Fire those that make 2GB files too! lol

 

[RabidOne]

We used to print beer cases for a local craft brewery. The Illustrator files were always massive. They were supplied by an agency and they were some of the most complicated things I have ever worked with. Sometimes people just have more space than you do and don't care about file sizes.

 

[ikarasu]

Very true.

A few weeks ago we had a client want some new signs designed, told them we would be about 2 weeks to get her proofs due to our workload, so she is having her "designer" do them, she had me send her the logos etc, so I put them all into a vector pdf and emailed them, got a reply back asking for me to separate each logo into its own .png file, aparently she can't work with vector files.... I'm dreading the files I get from her to print, especially since there are some fairly intricate contour cuts.

Cut lines are the worst because graphics designers rarely ever have to use them. We have three in-house designers and they still screw up on cutlines.

Somehow stuff always doubles or triple cuts, some of them are set up with the correct name and then some of them are set up with the wrong name so it doesn't cut at all, or my favorite every single cut file still has crop Marks including the 1.5 inch by 2 inch decals that we need a thousand of and the crop Marks are bigger than the decal itself.

I think most people learn by doing, we threw them up in production for a few days because it used to be so bad, they learned why things were done a certain way and most of the time it is okay now. But you never know when that one file crops up that is a complete gong Show cut wise...

We at our own cut lines and never asked the customers designers to do it for that reason. We just bake in a little bit of our time to the price.

 

[CanuckSigns]

Cut lines are the worst because graphics designers rarely ever have to use them. We have three in-house designers and they still screw up on cutlines.

Somehow stuff always doubles or triple cuts, some of them are set up with the correct name and then some of them are set up with the wrong name so it doesn't cut at all, or my favorite every single cut file still has crop Marks including the 1.5 inch by 2 inch decals that we need a thousand of and the crop Marks are bigger than the decal itself.

I think most people learn by doing, we threw them up in production for a few days because it used to be so bad, they learned why things were done a certain way and most of the time it is okay now. But you never know when that one file crops up that is a complete gong Show cut wise...

We at our own cut lines and never asked the customers designers to do it for that reason. We just bake in a little bit of our time to the price.

I've found most of the time if I try to open the file to add cut lines something else goes wrong, a gradient goes wonky, fonts get changed etc.

I wish onyx treated cut lines like Gerber omega does, you select a line and tell it to cut that line, done, super simple, then it doesn't matter about colour, name, thickness etc.

 

[Bobby H]

Lets say every file you get is 2 GB. from a cheap 24 x 24 coro sign to a big wall mural. a 10 TB HD is $170 - thats 5,000 2 GB files that will fit onto that hd. Space is technically finite... but at the price of TB's these days, its not much!

If every customer art file I received weighed 2GB I would be deleting those files immediately after production. The burden will be on the client to archive that artwork himself. Too often customers will use us as their branding asset repository, calling us up when they need a vector copy of a logo, even one they designed themselves. I'm not going to be accumulating stacks of hard discs like CDs in my music collection. The files I do archive are saved on at least two different physical discs stored in at least two different places. In the event one drive fails or the building burns down I'll still have my files. It's easier to keep that data organized and stored safely when it has been accumulated in a proper manner.

Hard discs don't last forever either. Periodically archived data needs to be transferred from an old disk (or discs) to a fresh new one. The computing industry is creeping toward phasing out the production of spinning platter hard discs and going all-in on solid state drives that currently aren't as reliable for long term storage. That could be a big problem.

I'm not a fan of storing massive amounts of art file data in the cloud. If your Internet connection goes down you don't have access to those files. Also cloud storage providers tend to charge more than $15 for "unlimited" storage. Google's cloud service offers 2TB of cloud storage for $10 per month.

I see it this way. We're in the production industry - Theyre in the graphic industry. They were taught how to setup eye catching graphics that will catch peoples attention... Thats their main function. Ours is to produce said graphics

The situation isn't that simple. And you're giving those "graphic designers" too much credit.

In my company we do a great deal of design work in-house because so many others on the outside just don't have the competence to do the work correctly. There are countless numbers of people out there doing design work and their qualifications vary wildly. Someone can get a copy of Photoshop via questionable means and then start passing himself off as a "professional graphic artist." Most of these people are just winging it. Very few of them know anything at all about graphic design for the outdoors (signs, billboards, vehicle wraps/fleet graphics, LED boards, etc). It's really bad how many don't understand simple geometry concepts like aspect ratio.

We rarely ever receive customer provided artwork that is truly production-ready. Most of the outside designers who seem to do more professional quality work merely provide us with the assets we need to lay out the artwork correctly and develop the shop drawings for production and to submit for installation permits.