Topic: Printing advice (Page 1 of 1)

Ok so I've started a new job here in LA and it involves printing alot of banners, posters, collateral material etc. I have a few questions that I'm hoping someone with some experience may be able to help me with.

1) When printing say a 22 x 28 poster should I design it at that dimension then print or should I design it as 8.5 x 11 and setup the document to print at 256% larger to fit the 22 x 28? That's how they told me to do it here, but not sure if it's optimal or not.

2) Screen calibration. Exactly how difficult is it? We're doing everything in CMYK and sometimes my Magenta is blown out and my banners look screwy.

3) Font management.... AARGH!! I'm using Suitcase and all of our fonts are on an external server. After creating a Set of fonts from time to time I can't see the fonts or there are errors loading them. Should the fonts be local or is this fine? OR is there something better the Suitcase? My job bought it so we use it, but I would love to recomend something a little more reliable.

It's been fun but challenging at the same time. Thanks guys.

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When printing say a 22 x 28 poster should I design it at that dimension then print or should I design it as 8.5 x 11 and setup the document to print at 256% larger to fit the 22 x 28? That's how they told me to do it here, but not sure if it's optimal or not.

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Make the document the size that you are going to print it at. If not you may and probably will get some very jacked up results.

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Should the fonts be local or is this fine?

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from this I am guessing you are using a Mac? If so, I am pretty sure that Suitcase is the best way to do it. I am not a "printing" type of guy myself but I do work for a company that has a large print service, Heidlbergs and all that crap, so I can go ask them questions

Later,

C:\

Yeah working @ actual size is the way to go. Keep in mind though that when you're working on items that are on a much larger scale, such as posters and banners, that as high of resolution isn't necessary because they are viewed at a bit more of a distance. This will help keep your file size down as well and make them more manageable files I always work large graphics around 150-200 dpi.

Screen calibration and printing. Don't rely on it. Familiarize yourself with the inkdropper in photoshop and how percentages of ink print. Over time it becomes second nature anyways. It sounds like your monitor is whacky though. Either that or the printer. What device is producing this result for you?

At my new job we use FontReserve. I found Suitcase 10 to be a piece of crap that didn't play well with Adobe programs. Font Reserve seems a little moody with questionable fonts and doesn't like to activate them sometimes. All in all though, I experience no system or other software problems as a result of using this program. I can't say the same for Suitcase. I've also heard that ATM (Adobe Type Manager) is good, but have only used the classic version so can't vouch for it personally.

Oh yeah this is in 10.3.9 btw. Congrats on the new job. Hope that helps.

(Edited by Jeni on 08-03-2006 12:19)

Thanks guys...
Cpromt, most of the posters we do are vectorized so I think thats why they let Quark do the resizing. Problem is most of my expertise comes from photoshop. I tried the actual size method, even with 4gig of ram, it was still a little sluggish.

Jeni, Figured out that if I copy all the fonts to my local drive and setup my set in suitcase for the most part it's stable. I think the whole accessing the fonts on the network thing was screwing it up.

thanks...

God I'm answering old posts.... but you need Illustrator at that size, especially for print.

If you HAVE to do it in PS, you can always try doing it at half the size, then have the printer double it. I would do a test print first though. I did a huge banner when I really didn't know how, and I sent it in at 300dpi at 1/3 the size. It turned out OK, but that's really risky.

I would actually love to hear from people that do large scale graphics and hear what programs they use and how they get images into Illustrator, especially ones that you just have to design in PS.

If you look at the site on my banner, in the print section, you can see photos of large scale stuff that I totally got away with doing wrong.

Eight posts and a sig in 45 minutes, this inmate does have energy. Master Suho..? Ah.... right. I suppose taking care of it right here would be just fine.

*zzzzzzzap*