I am having problems with printing vehicle wraps. I do my designs in AI and them convert to Photoshop to apply eye candy effects. The problem is that I cannot get a really crisp print becuase of the lack of res possible in photoshop. Does anyone have any fixes for this sort of deal. Do they have ai pluging like they do for photoshop. Is so where do I get somthing like that.
Thanks for you help,
Richard
First of all I hope your not printing them RGB. Most filter require RGB Mode..
You need to play around with different resolutions to see what's manageable and exceptable on your output device. Determine the viewing distance of the wrap. If its a "show" piece, you obviously want high resolution. If its a bsuted up box truck for Joe's tire barn, you can get away with much less resolution. Also consider the size of your machine. You're not going to be able to design bus wraps on a commodore 64. If you plan on designing high impact wraps on large vehicles, gety ready to cough up some dough. You're going to need plenty off speed, scratch disk space and storage!
Resolution??? 75 dpi (FINAL SIZE) is where I design 90% of my wraps. Buses are usually around 50. This will give you a crisp final print that looks good from 5' to 50'.
Make sure your document in photoshop is set to give you the final res you're looking for. 1/4 scale = 300 dpi for final output of 75, etc. Also make sure Your Illustrator file is the same dimension as your PS file, Then just copy and paste, add your filters, color correct and print. Try PS CS2 with the "Smart Object" feature. Very useful!
Agree completely with wrap artist
Your client couldn't tell the difference between a 300 dpi wrap and a 72 dpi wrap standing 5 feet from it, Much less 5 yards from it
unless you're doing some graphics for a golf cart, 72 dpi is going to be almost universal for small vehicle wraps
50 dpi for large scale wraps ie: busses & trailors
RGB has a wider color gamut. Why design in CYMK? The rip converts the image to CYMK.
I've seen these 50/72 dpi prints. I wouldn't put my name on them.
Get some real software and hardware and get results. I can do a 20ft box truck that looks sharp at 1ft away.
Like everyone else has said, you need a powerful computer. Create an empty document in PS equal to 125 dpi at 100%, at the exact proportion or size of the final print/image. Place your vector art into the document and size it to the edges of the space while it has the X across it. Hit any tool and it will say, "Place image?" hit yes and you're good to go. The files will be large, but beautiful. I don't like to go under 100 dpi unless the project is truly huge. A few years ago you could get away with a lower res image but these days too many people have seen nice prints and know it can be done.
Good luck!
dee
just go to image and canvas size in photoshop.......make it 300 ppi.....thats
probably overkill......180ppi they say for 720 dpi print SCALE IT UP IN THE RIP!!! hehe ye dont need tons of power and 1+gig files unless you LIKE waiting for the rip
an art director gave me a 375 meg file 150dpi at ACTUAL size 54"x25 ft. LOL
woulda been better for all concerned at 300-400 ppi+ 4ft wide =better file smaller size :wink:
definitely do NOT scale up in the rip... sure it will make it larger, but you can't get detail out of thin air. Design your document at actual size and desired resolution from the beginning. I personally would NEVER design at 50-70 dpi! My absolute minimum is 150dpi because my customers DO care what it looks like up close. Sure there's some "clicking and waiting" involved but I've always got something to weed out at my desk or e-mails to send anyway :)
[quote]
definitely do NOT scale up in the rip[/quote] :roll:
Wrong. postcript files, halftone screening. Let the rip do all the work. It's what was designed to do and exactly relates to the price you pay for it.....I do it all the time and loose nothing.
Sure there are some instances where it will work but say you've got a photograph of a crowd of people... and the quality isn't good enough to make out the detail in the people's faces in the back of the crowd. You're saying if you enlarge it in the rip, all of a sudden the detail will come out of nowhere?
Not gonna work! Crap in, crap out.
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Work with larger images.
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I work with 500-1gig tif files all the time.
Rip requires about 10gig HD space to process.
Click & Wait