An Adobe Illustrator image that is to be printed at 108 feet long, how large do I have to create it?

Question

Can it be done to a scale of 1 inch equals 1 foot or will that be much too small for good quality printing. It is to be a large banner of artwork.

Answer 1

You answered your own question. All my massive billboard outputs are scaled 1:12, or 1 inch for every foot. Then on output its scaled 1200%.



Unrelated, if I was working in metric I would do a 1:10



If everything is vector your fine for quality. If you have any raster images or if you have any transparency effects that rasterize when flattening then you have to figure out your optimal resolution and factor in that it is being scaled up 1200%.



To figure out your resolution you need to know your viewing distance. 300ppi is great for regular print jobs viewed at arms length but on an oversize print its absolutely insane.



1) The human eye couldn't tell the difference

2) Its just going to get downsampled before its output anyways

3) For absurdity sake if your output was 108 feet by 16 feet and was all raster at 300ppi and CMYK you would have a 256 gb file.



For some perspective, an average human looking at a billboard from 60 ft back in the most optimal conditions couldn't distinguish the difference beyond 9.5 ppi. That is with sharp monotones, when colour halftones get in the mix the number drops more.



100 ft = 5.7 ppi

80 ft = 7.1 ppi

60 ft = 9.5 ppi

40 ft = 14.3 ppi

20 ft = 28.6 ppi

10 ft = 57.2 ppi



So say you wanted it at 10ppi @ 100% final output your working file at 1:12 scale would need to be 120ppi.



--Addition to Vince M's answer bellow

You can't make a 108' (1,296") artboard in Illustrator so you do have to scale.



Cheers

Answer 2

The best people to answer this would be the printer, it really depends on the RIP because some have difficulty processing a file at large percentage scales. I know I can make artworks at 10% of final size and still get them printed, but there are printers who cannot go less than 25%.



If your file contains raster images (or raster effects) you will need them to be a minimum of 50ppi when printed (and this is pushing it 200 would be best) for Direct-to-Media printing. However, many RIPs will be unable to keep a profile applied to an image imported in Illustrator, so you might need to compile various sections in InDesign or Quark.



An all-vector image will print fine from a 10% artwork.

Answer 3

Since you will be doing the actual designing of this banner on your monitor, it doesn't matter what the actual output size of the document. In other words, open a "New" document at the exact size of your finished banner. (108 feet by, ?)



You are going to have to zoom out to fit your design on the screen, anyway, so why bother messing around with "scale" sizes when the computer does that for you?



And, as mentioned, if the text and images are vectored, they can be scaled up to whatever size they need to be. Just remember, that when you do text, one inch is about 72 points. So if a letter is to be, say one foot tall, you need to make your font size 864 points. And so on for larger letters.

Answer 4

Assuming you are only using vectors (pen tool, shape tool, etc.) in Illustrator to create your image, your artboard can be any size that's proportional to the dimensions of the final banner. This is because vector graphics can be scaled to any dimensions and retain sharp edges.



If you are using any raster (pixel-based) images, such as a JPEG photograph or something that has gone through Photoshop, you will need to create the artboard at 108 feet long and set your raster image at 300 dpi at the actual printed size in order to ensure that element will print at high resolution.

Answer 5

Okay, to add to what has been previously answered, there are a couple of major details I need to point out. 1. If it's a black-and-white image, you need to check if it's been saved as "bitmap" "grayscale" or in color ("RGB" or "CMYK" Once you open it in Photoshop, notice the title bar for the image. In parentheses it will say one of those things. In order to use the magic wand it cannot be in "bitmap." You can change this by going to the "Image" menu and selecting "Mode" and then "grayscale" If it's already in "grayscale" or one of the color modes you're okay. [I'll point out here that if you're importing it into another program, just make it "bitmap," save it as a TIFF and you'll be completely fine. It will be transparent automatically once you import it.] 2. Like they said, select all the background layer and copy/paste, which will create a new layer. You can then delete the background layer in the layers pallette. 3. The magic wand looks just like that. It's like a stick with little sparklies at the tip. Once you select the magic wand from the toolbox, you'll need to look at the top of the screen, where the tool options are. You should see a checkbox that says "contiquous." You want to have that checked. If you don't you'll end up selecting all the white space, both outside and inside, which may not be what you want. If you're just trying to get the space around it to be transparent, you want to check continquous. 4. Then click in the white space around the object. If the lines of the object hit the outside edges, you may not get all of it at once. There are two ways you can get around this. a. change the canvas size. "Image" menu, "Canvas Size..." and add just .1 inch on every size. Make sure you select the middle square so it addes that .1 inch all around. Then try the magic wand. or b. Select all the surrounding white space by holding down the Shift Key during the selection with the magic wand. Then delete. 5. Flatten the image using the layers pallette (the little arrow at the top right of the layers pallette reveals a popup menu) 6. Save as a gif.