Just a quick question to trow at people

[Joseph Grogan]

When you are designing a print for a big canvas do you scale the final size by 1/4 and thats what you should make the image up to in photoshop.

e.g. A client wants a poster 12 ft by 4 ft.

If i know thats the final size do i then make that canvas in ps 1/4 that size so its 3 ft by 1 ft and 300dpi.

I read that somewhere that thats generally the practice for graphic design.

Does anyone know if that sounds right

 

[davidbehan]

Never designed a poster in my life - this is a webmaster forum!

 

[ButtermilkJack]

Yes, that's the general rule for large format printing. You'll end up with roughly 75dpi which should usually be fine for viewing from a distance.

However, if it's a fine art print or similar (i.e. something that will be viewed up close) then you should aim for as high a resolution as possible, even if that means 300MB Photoshop files!

 

[Joseph Grogan]

Never designed a poster in my life - this is a webmaster forum!

Thanks Dave... I know

I was just throwing it out and asking. And its in the graphic design section

Thats cool buttermilkjack.... I thought that was it but was not to sure so i wasnt. Cheers though

 

[Forbairt]

Frodo just did a 6meter x 3 meter ?? or something like that and he mentioned scaling it down to 1/4 size.

 

[CiaranR]

Yea 1/4 size is the normal. Mine was actually all vector data so I could have made 6cm x 3cm and it would have scaled fine. But if you are working with images try for 600dpi and if you can 1200dpi then your image will be perfect also don't for get to take crops and bleed into consideration, so a 1cm bleed becomes 4cm, your printer will tell you what bleed you need. Also don't forget to save your images as a .tiff of a .pdf with tiff compression rather jpg as jpg is lossy and tiff is lossless.