site board resolution?

[armilla]

Quick question for anyone out there who may have done something similar. I've been asked to produce an image of a proposed building for a site board (you know, the board that they put up on the hoardings/scaffolding around a building site, with an image of the building, design team details, etc). The image needs to be printed at 1300x1300mm, and the client had asked for it to be at 300dpi, which makes it about 15000 pixels square! I'm thinking 300dpi seems rather over the top for something that will be viewed from a distance, what do you think? Have any of you done anything similar, and if so what dpi did you render out to?

I originally produced an animation at 720x576 for this project, so I'm guessing that whatever dpi they require, the texture maps are going to need some work to stand up to the vast increase in size.

Cheers.

[CCS]

100dpi would be more than adequate. I do them all the time. (For reference, billboards are in the 30-50 dpi range.)

[Syclone1]

Yea I agree thats way over the top and sounds like who ever is printing the image has no idea what their doing. I did a couple renders a year or so ago that were 14' tall by 40' wide and the client had said that their printer wanted it at 300dpi I just laughed and told them unless they have 10pt text on there that they want read it was a major waste of time and money so those ended up getting printed at 40dpi which I have a couple photos of them if you would like to see I could post them. Anyway for a render of that size the most Ive ever used is 105dpi to 115dpi which turns out nice. There are formulas for calculating it out but I never had the time to figure them out or apply them and I managed an advertising agency here for 10 years so Ive set up prints for everything from a postage stamp to the side of a 3 story building so I have a good idea from experience of the resolutions to use for most of my projects.

Hope that helps in some way, sorry for the rambling

-dave

[armilla]

Wow - fast response.

Phew that's a relief! Thanks for all the info guys, much appreciated.

Andrew.

[jujubee]

Dave- to add to this topic - do you got any suggestions for printers or is that something you usually do locally? I've never had to produce outdoor images. Someone recommended Kinkos and truthfully I'm pretty wary of them.

I got a request for one from one developer in Manhattan for a place down in Tennessee. So do I make it here in Beantown and ship the whole darn thing boards and all, or print it out and just roll it up haveing them deal with the signage, or just have someone down in Tennessee deal with it? Perhaps you have an online place you go to.

Also, any ideas for costs and types of coatings to use?

[CCS]

For sign boards, I know which local printers do a good job and which don't. If you want to send out, there is a local company that is actually quite large. They do banners for Nascar, Disney, etc. and printing of all types.

http://www.brittenmedia.com/

[EricCamper]

We get this all the time. The client or whoever knows a guy who has a printer or scanner that SAYS it does 9600 resolution. lol I once had a client insist that he prints all his 8x10 images at 4800 dpi to his HP. Once I told him that it would be IMPOSSIBLE for him to open up an image that is 48000 pixels wide. He thought it through a little more. lol.

[Syclone1]

Dave- to add to this topic - do you got any suggestions for printers or is that something you usually do locally? I've never had to produce outdoor images. Someone recommended Kinkos and truthfully I'm pretty wary of them.

I got a request for one from one developer in Manhattan for a place down in Tennessee. So do I make it here in Beantown and ship the whole darn thing boards and all, or print it out and just roll it up haveing them deal with the signage, or just have someone down in Tennessee deal with it? Perhaps you have an online place you go to.

Also, any ideas for costs and types of coatings to use?

I usually have a couple local places do any printing that I need, some times the small local shops have the best prices and quality. Like one place I use is owned and ran by a husband and wife chinese couple and their fantastic to deal with and they have produced way better work than the larger production houses. Of cource that may be that they actuall give a s*** about their product and how they present it.

-dave

[Da_elf]

ive come across the "we want it at 300DPI for a billboard" crap before. i wanted to laugh. the most i would do a bilboard at would be 60-100dpi. nothing over 100

[jujubee]

Have you had printers doing any posts as well or is that something i need to do at the hardware store?

[armilla]

I finally got hold of the printers, and they have asked for an image 25% of the final size (1300x1300mm) at 300dpi, which is equivalent to 1300x1300mm at 75dpi (3838x3838pixels). Why they couldn't say that in the first place is anyone's guess!

[jujubee]

Perhaps the printer has some good scaling software which can do a somewhat decent job at enlargement. Also, they will have a 300 DPI file on had for later use in case you need a smaller print job. Just some thoughts on it...

[Dynedain]

I finally got hold of the printers, and they have asked for an image 25% of the final size (1300x1300mm) at 300dpi, which is equivalent to 1300x1300mm at 75dpi (3838x3838pixels). Why they couldn't say that in the first place is anyone's guess!

Because the client, the person between you and the printer, usually has no understanding of what the printer is talking about, and the printer is used to getting screen resolution tiny images downloaded off the web.

[dellis]

I was a little unclear about this too. I just finished rendering a huge image this morning at 10800x7290 cause the architect wanted it at 300 dpi. So whats the standard....if you are printing on 36x24 sheets?

[CCS]

100dpi is plenty for that size.