Making posters

[H4T]

Hey, can anyone tell me what the best way to make posters (prints) is? Using Photoshop I get massive lag using actual inches and 300 dpi, so how does one actually go about creating, and printing a poster?

[.soulty]

i guess you have to deal with the lag.

if you seem to be doing alot of that sort of work maybe it's worth while for you to upgrade. increase productivity and turnover so in the end you make the money back.

you could decrease the resolution to something less than 300 but 300dpi is the ideal printing resolution so i would try not too go that route.

Maybe try vector art for the posters so resolution then is not a major issue and even though there is a slight lag with large images of vector it is much more reasonable than photoshop.

[mlk]

it all depends...

I always work in 350-400 dpi for the printshop using the real document size (ie if your poster is an 5"x8" poster, do a 5"x8" canvas with your own dpi)

whatever you do don't go below 300 dpi as it will show big pixels on the poster...

[H4T]

What if I wanted to make a 22" X 34.5" poster?

I know that Photoshop produces a ton of lag, and I've Googled "how to" stuff before about posters, and I've been told that Illustrator should be used to make these posters.

So I guess to be more concise (assuming I'm on the right track), is should I put in 22" X 34.5" for the size dimensions in Illustrator, or smaller?

[mjULTRA]

when im designing large scale banners, i encounter this problem, and the way i work around it is to either cut the dpi in half (300 > 150 dpi), or cut the scale in half (3 feet x 8 feet = 1.5 feet x 4 feet).. either way helps, but both methods will comprimise your print quality. for large banners meant to be viewed from a distance, it may not be much of a big deal, but for a tabloid size poster, it might be..

maybe you can design your background, in one PSD, and then your foreground in another PSD, and then when both are complete, flatten them, and merge them into one file.. that is assuming that it is only lag issues that you are dealing with, and not the crashing of photoshop that these large files bring about...

[mlk]

lag issue: try removing any other apps running at the same time (ie MSN, aol, internet explorer) and give PS 95% of the comp's ressources in 'preferences'...

And don't expect to have something neat and clear using a small scale, the bigger, the more neat the image will be.

As for illustrator, what you might have heard is that illustrator uses vector graphics (versus raster/bitmap graphx in PS) which can be scaled to any size without the quality loss (like drawing in flash), and the format will save those vector shapes, not the image, thus the best quality in printing...

Importing your image into illustrator (dont even know if that can be done) and saving it from there won't help.

[.soulty]

What if I wanted to make a 22" X 34.5" poster?

I know that Photoshop produces a ton of lag, and I've Googled "how to" stuff before about posters, and I've been told that Illustrator should be used to make these posters.

So I guess to be more concise (assuming I'm on the right track), is should I put in 22" X 34.5" for the size dimensions in Illustrator, or smaller?Actually you are right there about using illustrator might help you, But that all depends on your designs. I use to work for a display company that use to create high quality images for dimensions up to and above 1 metre by 1 metre signs.

Make the illustrator file actual size, as you want. then start in photoshop. (maybe best to close illustrator and open when you are finished with photoshop)

You still have to deal with photoshop lag, until you have the graphical image you are happy with, you can seperate the image into sections to decrease lag and increase work flow, but you have to be precise with how you go about that.

If you are using illustrator, i suggest making a 150 dpi Tiff copy (you can even go lower, something like 100dpi) of your file along with the 300dpi Tiff image. This is so positioning and working with the image in illustrator is easy and less laggy.

So basically you open up Illustrator set you the document to actual size, then place the images (lower res images) into the document, make sure you have link ticked when you import the images.

After you have set up the positions and accompanied text and whatnot in the illustrator document, the last thing you then need to do will be to go to link, and replace all the 150dpi images to the 300dpi (or whatever you set your highest quality res 2) then take save it take it to the printer.

I would of mentioned earlier this earlier to you, but thought you were just talking about photoshop files and was not sure you had illustrator.

hope this can help
cheers
.soulty

[H4T]

So what you're saying is

1) Open Illustrator, make new image, 22"x36", save file.
2) Close Ill., open file in Photoshop
3) Create image in Photoshop
4) Import the image(s) you made in Photoshop into Illustrator and increase DPI

? That still sounds like making the whole thing in Photoshop. I have a feeling that isn't exactly what you were getting at, but thats what I got out of that. I have 192 MB of RAM, lets keep that in mind too, by the way, lol, so lag == crashed computer. The lag usually kills me and doesn't let me do anything.

[.soulty]

no4 is more about replacing the 100-150 dpi images that you use in illustrator for adjusting the position, then you replace then with the 300dpi when you complete.

Yes it still really is using photoshop to create the main part of the image, but like i said you can segment the image to make it easy for you, less strain on your computer also its easy and less time consuming if you want to play around with typography in illustrator using this method other-wise photoshop would choke.