Printing?

donmeister

Sorry Mods if this is the forum feel free to move!

I'm just after making a A4 Poster for a gig (for a friend) and I was just wondering what would be the best file format for printing involved,I'm clueless when it comes to this stuff! What DPI will I use also? "(Will 72dpi work or will it have to be +250dpi?)

Any help greatly appreciated!

pauro 76

donmeister wrote: »

Sorry Mods if this is the forum feel free to move!

I'm just after making a A4 Poster for a gig (for a friend) and I was just wondering what would be the best file format for printing involved,I'm clueless when it comes to this stuff! What DPI will I use also? "(Will 72dpi work or will it have to be +250dpi?)

Any help greatly appreciated!

PDF with crops is universally acceptable for the printers to use. Just to save hassle with file formats on the printers side of things. 250dpi sounds decent but 300dpi I think would be standard.

mood

300dpi is required. If you have started designing with 72dpi you will have to scrap it and design from scratch using 300dpi.

Deliverance

donmeister wrote: »

Sorry Mods if this is the forum feel free to move!

I'm just after making a A4 Poster for a gig (for a friend) and I was just wondering what would be the best file format for printing involved,I'm clueless when it comes to this stuff! What DPI will I use also? "(Will 72dpi work or will it have to be +250dpi?)

Any help greatly appreciated!

If your going for a printers to print it then...300dpi for print. Save it as a pdf. Some printers need an original file like AI or Pshop and all that if they do then just give them these original files and get some feedback.

If you already have it made at a lower dpi and just want to print it off yourself... then just print it off and see how it looks. If you and your friend are happy with the printed result then just go with that.

donmeister

Deliverance wrote: »

If your going for a printers to print it then...300dpi for print. Save it as a pdf. Some printers need an original file like AI or Pshop and all that if they do then just give them these original files and get some feedback.

If you already have it made at a lower dpi and just want to print it off yourself... then just print it off and see how it looks. If you and your friend are happy with the printed result then just go with that.

Thanks for the info, Ive it already done in 72dpi so looks like im starting from scratch again! :rolleyes: Damn this printing business!

Deliverance

donmeister wrote: »

Thanks for the info, Ive it already done in 72dpi so looks like im starting from scratch again! :rolleyes: Damn this printing business!

Yeah I thought that. Are you looking to print it off professionally or is your friend just looking for general flyers done by your good self? Personally from the sounds of it you should just print of what you have. No need for the 300dpi recreation other than a learning curve for future ref for yourself. Save yourself some work there and print off the 72dpi work that you have done and give that to them.

Just do that for them. I spent days and hours printing a poster for a 'friend' and at the end of the day the fecker did not appreciate the work that went into it. Just give them the version you have first, it they are not happy with that then do the 300dpi stuff. Learn the other stuff about print for your self afterwards.

donmeister

Deliverance wrote: »

Yeah I thought that. Are you looking to print it off professionally or is your friend just looking for general flyers done by your good self? Personally from the sounds of it you should just print of what you have. No need for the 300dpi recreation other than a learning curve for future ref is so.

Yeah the friend is set on going for professsional printing with glossy paper and all that jazz,im just the middle man!

Cheers for the replies....

Hank_Scorpio

Printing depends on type of paper and the linescreen used by the printing company.

Usually a linescreen of 150 lpi is used for creating halftones for professional printing. But newspapers and things like that use 85 lpi. Because the paper is thinner and it will have less ink on it that way etc.

What you need to do is multiply the lpi of a print by the square root of 2 (1.4141^) or simply 1.5 to get the desired DPI for printing. (The square root of 2 is enough to deal with pixels rotated at 45 degrees).

So if you ask your printers what linescreen they are printing it it could be 85 - in which case 1.5 x 85 = 127.5 dpi

or if it's 133 then your dpi minimum should be 199.5

or if it's 150 then your dpi should be 225.5 minimum

Artbooks and really fancy printed material is printed with a linescreen of 175 which means that your images should be a min of 262.5 dpi.

If your images are not a lot of detail, like clouds, or a fog, or water, something without crisp sharp lines and corners then you can lower your dpi to 150 dpi and nobody would be able to tell the difference.

If you've got images with lots of detail, like a face, clothes etc. then having a slightly higher dpi on the image with a bit of USM will make the image sharper for printing.


And that's the lesson for today


As practice it's not good to use Photoshop to create posters. A page layout like InDesign, Quark, Pagemaker, Framemaker, or the free Scribus would be best suited.

Photoshop for photos, illustrator for illustrations and a page layout program for doing page layouts.

OctavarIan

Hank_Scorpio wrote: »

Photoshop for photos, illustrator for illustrations and a page layout program for doing page layouts.

For designing posters Photoshop is just fine.

Pixelcraft

Hank's right. Designing a whole poster in ps is resource hungry, and unnecessary.

donmeister

Well guys I did up the A4 Poster and Flyer,in Photshop,no problems at all,started again from strach using 300dpi,they came out great,thanks everyone for all the info! (Esp. Hank)

Here is the finished product (Didnt want ye to keep in suspense

Poster:


Flyer:

Deliverance

Links not working?

donmeister

Mhh just edited it there,images dont show on Google Chrome,but fine on Firefox!

Hank_Scorpio

OctavarIan wrote: »

For designing posters Photoshop is just fine.

If you're a beginner it's best not to use photoshop to create posters. It can be done, I've talked at length about this many times before.

I'd only recommend using Photoshop to create posters if you are in an expert in file formats, vector + raster workflows, RIPs, photoshop, bleed, cmyk vs rgb, 8 bit, 16 bit, spot colours etc.

If you don't know what these are or the problems they can pose then you should not be creating a poster in photoshop.

It would be a waste of your time, paper, money, hard disk space, printers time, etc.


You would have far more success piecing it together in a page layout program. It's easier on resources and they are better for converting the entire process to a print ready file format.

Pixelcraft wrote: »

Hank's right. Designing a whole poster in ps is resource hungry, and unnecessary.

Exactly

Hank_Scorpio

Donmeister.

Firstly, just because someone says it's ok to design a poster in Photoshop does not mean that it is. There's a very special way to design a poster in photoshop - there's a right way and a wrong way. Just so you know.


Well firstly, you're happy with - and you're the only person you have to please.

So many fonts, on the poster and flyer, Teenage Party has two different fonts and colour.

The shield thing has two different fonts on it in poster and flyer.

The colours are kind of mardy. The gradients, the fuzzy crowd of the picture, the repeated star elements, the badly feathered hip-hopper (who is that anyway, someone famous? If so you might be in violation of copyrights etc., I suspect it's one of the DJs) The shadow on the Hip Hop could be hard to read the words from a distance.

I mean the whole thing is ok - but just some inconsistencies.

I think if you'd stuck with a colour plan, used similar fonts and not so many fonts.

That note paper thing is not great.

Even the RnB logo is different on flyer and poster.

Again, you're happy with it. I'm not having a go. It's not by any means fantastic - but it's for a Teenage Party and they won't care what the poster looks like.

They know where to go, what time and who's playing.

All the info is there. It's displayed. The only thing is you never said what time it's over at so younger teenagers could arrange to be picked up by parents etc.

Some may not know where the TF Royal is it could have read "TF Royal Hotel, Castlebar"


And on the Flyer you have

Phone

and on the poster you have

Contact


These are little things that when put together give an overall better look and feel, especially in consistencies.

Try work your font usage down to max of 3. Use the same fonts for different things, use the same logos on all flyers. Keep colours to a colour scheme


Again, you're happy with it. It's not entirely horrible, and it's for Teenagers.

I can't bring myself to say it's passable though.

It's alright.

Deliverance

donmeister wrote: »

Mhh just edited it there,images dont show on Google Chrome,but fine on Firefox!

Works fine in firefox but not in ie, no matter. Good job donmeister, some good poster work there.