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#1 March 8 2017

serouj
Member

Graphics for large storefront

I'm putting together a nice graphic to be printed on vinyl stickers (or whatever it's called) and i want to make sure my output file is good enough to be sticked on a large storefront without losing quality.any help?

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#2 March 8 2017

Metalloy
Member

Re: Graphics for large storefront

not an expert but i'll share what i know.
you need to know the difference between pixel based ( photoshop) and vector based (illustrator)
now vector is not pixelated, that mean the same graphic can be scaled to as big as you want it to and you wont have any problem. the way i did it when i faced a situation similar to yours is that I converted the required imaged to vector form in illustraror ( google it or youtube it, i dont remeber how)  and then saved the file as pdf and sent it to the printshop and it was a success.
if you do your graphics strictly on photoshop and so the photo is still in pixelated format, then you need to be really carefull, as you need plenty of pixels to have a clear image, but if i were you i would definitly work on converting in vector.

Last edited by Metalloy (March 8 2017)

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#3 March 8 2017

serouj
Member

Re: Graphics for large storefront

Metalloy wrote:

not an expert but i'll share what i know.
you need to know the difference between pixel based ( photoshop) and vector based (illustrator)
now vector is not pixelated, that mean the same graphic can be scaled to as big as you want it to and you wont have any problem. the way i did it when i faced a situation similar to yours is that I converted the required imaged to vector form in illustraror ( google it or youtube it, i dont remeber how)  and then saved the file as pdf and sent it to the printshop and it was a success.
if you do your graphics strictly on photoshop and so the photo is still in pixelated format, then you need to be really carefull, as you need plenty of pixels to have a clear image, but if i were you i would definitly work on converting in vector.

Thank you Metalloy, i am actually familiar with what you said but the thing is that I will be working with different pngs to make the whole image - i'm not sure how successful the conversion to vector is going to be, there are lots of details and colors. I will certainly look into it anyway. Thank you again

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#4 March 8 2017

Cpt.Majed
Member

Re: Graphics for large storefront

What's the poster size ?
What's the printer's DPI ?

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#5 March 10 2017

beezer
Member

Re: Graphics for large storefront

The best way to handle images when creating for print is to create a blank file with the dimensions you expect to  print at and make it 300dpi. Then insert your images one by one, you'll then know what will and won't pixelate enough. Also factor in the distance between your viewer and the sign, some pixelation is acceptable at far distances.

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#6 March 26 2017

Azachariou
Member

Re: Graphics for large storefront

Running an image trace can be successful if you tweak the settings just right. although sometimes it's more efficient to retrace the base image manually.

What I suggest is planning your design. Which elements absolutely need to be in pixel form? which can be vectors?
Also you should look into upscaling images. although the resulting image would be a bit less sharp, post processing can bring it back a bit and at that scale the distance is a big factor as Beezer mentionned

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