Image size for construction site sign

[jonrempel]

Good morning,

I have a client that wants a rendering produced for a condo project for marketing and for the site sign. He insists that it must be full size (4'x8') at a resolution of 300dpi or higher. This contradicts must of the information that I have. I would appreciate any advice that I could get on producing an image for this application.

I am currently using Viz 2006, which I purchased earlier this month and am not quite sure what the best settings would be. Can you specify dpi in Viz?

[FlytE]

In viz I believe you render the image to a pixel size related to 72 dpi, and just reduce its size in photoshop to up the resolution.....

 

In my experience of siteboards, although clients tend to want things at 300dpi, most largescale printers only tend to print around 180dpi. I would get in touch with a sign manufacturer to confirm this as it could potentially save you alot of render time etc...

[Scott Baumberger]

Yeah, 96" @ 300dpi = 28,800 pixels wide. No problem, right?

 

I've run into this before, and you just need to talk your client down from the cliff. Construction signs are generally printed at 40-50 dpi - but sometimes as high as 75 dpi - this type of output is a pretty forgiving so you should be able to get away with a pixel width of 4000-5000 pixels or so.

 

I had a similiar request for a 50,000 pixel image for a 16 foot wide barricade, and we were able to upsample the final image to about 6000 pixels and it turned out just fine.

 

DPI in Viz is defined pretty much the same way as every other program. Determine the size of your final print in inches, and then determine the allowable print quality (as dots or pixels per inch). This will tell you the number of pixels to render to.

 

If you're still having trouble, do some searching on this forum. I'm sure there are better descriptions than mine.

[jonrempel]

Thanks for the information. I have talked to a graphic designer and a sign maker and you are all on the same page. I just thought that I should get some advice from CG professionals so that I have all my bases covered when I talk to the client.

Thanks again

[IC]

I'm doing a sign just now and the graphics guy has asked for it to be 10% of the full size of the board at 300dpi. That works out at 7205 x 3543 pixels.

 

Personally I think it's too big but it's feasible so I agreed to it.

[sir_wig]

i did soem renders at 6000x5000 in max and it takes a VERY long time, feel fully justified in billing your client for the extra ram that you'll need!

 

there is a limit to how big adobe programs can print because bizarely enough their print software uses 16 bit addressing, so can only deal with 300 dpi up to A1+ by the time you get to A0+ it starts to absolutly spazz out

 

the res of the sign really depends on how close people are goign to get to it. if it's goign to be right up close you can render it in chunks

[sir_wig]

i did some renders at 6000x5000 in max and it takes a VERY long time, feel fully justified in billing your client for the extra ram that you'll need!

 

there is a limit to how big adobe programs can print because bizarely enough their print software uses 16 bit addressing, so can only deal with 300 dpi up to A1+ by the time you get to A0+ it starts to absolutly spazz out

 

the res of the sign really depends on how close people are goign to get to it. if it's goign to be right up close you can render it in chunks