Expert: Ken Black - 7/30/2009

Question
Hey Ken!

You've answered me a recent question, so I figured I'd come back again!

I'm about to print a large 3 ft x 7 ft banner for my company.  I'm using InDesign right now, but being that we don't do a lot of large format printing, I'm a little confused on a couple things. The banner is simple; there's only 1 background image and then a vector image (which doesn't matter).  Here are my problems:

Do I need to bring everything full scale into InDesign?  I'm afraid if I do that, the final package could be over 3 GB or so.  Our printing company prints banners at 600dpi, so I figure I need to change the resolution of the background image to 600ppi, but do I need to size it to 84 x 36 inches or leave it at it's current stock photo size?

Our printer suggested putting things in Illustrator and then blowing it up like 400% or something.  I thought that to be kind of strange being that Illustrator is an animation program.  

Basically I'm just confused on exactly how to set up my background image and how to export everything without having some MEGA file on my hands.  

Thanks for your help!!

Answer
Hi Brandon,

No, you should not have to change the resolution of your image to match the printers resolution, the two are very different from each other and unfortunately too complex for me to explain effectively here. But, I don't think you will need to worry too much, if you have an image that is large enough that when you scale it larger its effective resolution does not drop below 150 dpi. Large format inkjet printing is far more forgiving than commercial printing in this regard. Since this piece is likely to be viewed from a distance you shouldn't notice any degradation. Follow your printer's advice on this, they know their equipment's capabilities best, or should.

Using Illustrator is probably the way to go here. It's not an animation program, but is an Illustration program and it tends to handle the larger document sizes better than Indesign. Also,
the printer is probably better equipped to handle Illustrator files. When you place the image into the document, it should only become large in file size if you have to embed it or create an eps, which will embed the image automatically. If you can, keep the image as a link and send both the image and the document file to your printer, if they can accept it this way.

Remember to always follow the advice of the printer that is manufacturing your finished piece. Everyone does things a bit differently from one another and also has a different idea or method on how things should be done to achieve maximum results.

Thanks,

Ken Black

www.bestprintingonline.com