How to Prepare Your Image File For Poster Printing

By Janice Jenkins

Be it an online poster printing company, or a traditional poster printing company, most of them would always prefer a digital copy of your image for poster printing. A digital image for printing posters is the best and quickest way for a poster printing company to know what your color poster should look like. In most cases, they would want a high resolution image and a few other important image properties in your poster file. Below is a how-to guide on how to prepare your image file for poster printing. This should help you quicken the process of poster printing and lessen the chances of mistakes being made by you or the printer.

Step 1: File Type
Before sending in anything to your poster printing company you must first always ask what file type they usually work with. This is important since this usually relates to what software they use in printing posters. Most printers would accept image files like JPEG, TIFF and EPS. These are usually used for direct printing. However, to be a bit flexible with the poster design, it is usually better to send a file format where the design of the color poster can be edited. This gives the poster printing company the added ability to change a few properties of the design, or even add a few minor changes to make your custom poster easily producible in their printing machine. These formats include the PDS for Adobe Photoshop and the Gimp file format for open source users. If you are a bit of a novice and have created your design using Office suite software, like Microsoft Office or Open Office, some printing companies do accept file formats like that. So ask about the file formats they use. It is always better make a design in software where the native file format is the one used by the printers. It makes the process easier, and quicker.

Step 2: Dimensions
Next, you need to decide on the dimensions. Before sending anything your printer, always determine the dimensions of your poster design. You can use a custom dimension for custom posters but these will usually cost more since there will be some cutting involved. It is better to set your poster dimensions in a standard poster format. There are a lot of standard dimensions in use for posters in different countries. You can have the standard legal or letter size (8.5x11 or 8.5x14) for home or office posters. There are the standard indoor poster sizes (11x17 and 18x24). Also, there are also the bigger outdoor posters (24x36 and 27x39). Ask your poster printing company on the standard sizes they use for their posters. Once you have that information, adapt your design to fit those standard dimensions. This saves you time since it all standardized, and it saves you money since there are no extra costs due to cutting.

Step 3: Color Settings
Depending on the software the company uses to print posters, you might need to set the color properties of your image file to a certain setting. The usual settings would be RGB (Red Green Blue) or CMYK (Cyan Magenta Yellow Black). These settings determine the mix of "basic" colors that a software uses to produce the different other colors in the visible light spectrum. You need to ask what mode your printer usually uses. If you set the color wrongly, there is a chance that the color of your poster might be a bit changed since they would probably convert your design from RGB to CMYK or vice versa. So always pick the color mode that the printer uses in your design before sending it. This assures that what you see on screen is what the printout will produce.

Step 4: Resolution
Always send a high resolution image file to your poster printer. The higher the resolution the clearer your poster design would be once it is produced. Don't make the mistake in using low resolution images from the web in your poster design. These kinds of images will usually be distorted and will turn into pixels once they roll of the printer. Web images have usually a resolution of 72 dpi (dots per inch. For most poster printing services the standard resolution used is 300 dpi. Make sure that your image file is at this standard printing resolution before sending.

Step 5: Support files
Lastly, a lot of people forget to include support files when they send their poster for printing. This usually happens when a poster designer uses an exotic font not present in the poster printer's software. Usually a substitution occurs in fonts and other special characters ruining the design for printing. So if you used a special custom font, always include the font file along with your design.

Great! Once you have most of these properties set for the printers, you will be ready to send them any kind of design you want.

For comments and inquiries about the article visit: Printing Posters
Janice Jenkins is a writer for a marketing company in Chicago, IL. Mostly into marketing research, Janice started writing articles early 2007 to impart her knowledge to individuals new to the marketing industry.
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