Help in printing 30 foot banner.

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Compiler

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Hi i would like to know the process behind printing huge banners.

What kind of camera do they use?
Is it possible to print pictures taken from mobile cam say 5 mega pixel into Big hoarding Say 30 foot * 30 foot scale?

Can photoshop comes handy converting such pictures to accommodate large scale?
 
-With such banners, what is important is from what distance will it be viewed.

if it is to be viewed from a close range you need high quality pictures taken by a professional camera - a 5 megapixel will fall short. Big prints such as hoardings are viewed from far and its possible to get away with a lower quality as this is neutralised by distance. However 5 megapixel is really less for that as well.

- They are most likely using large format cameras such as Hasselblad, often with a digital back to capture images in digital format.

- yes Photoshop can be handy is scaling up the image, but there is only so much one can do. A small image = less information, so when you scale it up you lose even more information... hence blurry images.

I am not an expert in this but this is what i know
 
Helpful but i m asking for something else.

Can photoshop be used to scale small images to bigger one.

I know It will be tedious job and will need lot of skill but can 5megapixel camera be used to create such hoarding using photoshop?
 
Only if you want the image to be really blurry.
The amount of detail captured by the camera will not be enough.
Try zooming into any image, you'll soon reach a point where all you'll see are pixels, and no amount of photoshopping will improve it.
Printing a 5mp image on a 30 ft canvas is like zooming into it 100 times...Erratic is right...it's not going to look good unless you view it from a really long distance.
 
From my experience mobile phones can hardly take decent printable images, they are not really made for printing stuff.

Again that really depends on what kind of an image you shot on a 5mp camera. if you have shot some kind of flat graphic (eg : like a cartoon/vector graphic), you can import it into illustrator (not photoshop) and convert the whole image into a vector using paths and then use it for the hoarding. It is possible to draw vector-like forms (that retain details on scaling) in newer versions of photoshop but I like the editability of illustrator.

If the image you shot is more real (eg : people, animals, landscapes) then scaling a 5mp to something that would reproduce decently on a hoarding is near to impossible.

what u describe as 'concentrate the pixel', you need certain amount of detail in the base image to then 'work on' in photoshop when u scale it up... which a 5 megapixel is unlikely to have that in such type of images.

Even if as us said, its a matter of skill/tedious process... a professional image processing studio that attempts to do such jobs would charge a great deal.. you are better off buying a new camera in that amount :p
 
@op, print resolution depends first and foremost on what type of printer you use. It also depends on the distance from where you are going to view the image.

talk to the printer guy and ask him what resolution is required for the size and distance of viewing of the billboard. it is usually in lpi (lines per inch) not dpi (dots per inch). ex: like 200lpi or 150lpi. When you know what the final size and resolution is see if photoshop supports the total resolution of that image. I think photoshop supports around max 300,000 x 300,000 pixels per image. Which is a lot.

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For a decent 30 foot banner printout, you will need a full frame camera, or a middle format film SLR. These cameras are really expensive, so if it's just a one time job, try to borrow one or hire a professional photographer for the day or so.

You should be looking at a full format resolution of 20-21MP or thereabouts...
 
I wonder may be that is the reason i dont find big hoardings for small scale advertisement.

never heard of lines per inch how do they calculate it? :)
 
such a large banner is designed and then printed, not photographed and printed. Aces pointed out correctly with the photo resolution, hire a photographer for this.
 
puns said:
such a large banner is designed and then printed, not photographed and printed. Aces pointed out correctly with the photo resolution, hire a photographer for this.
Click to expand...
Confused about you saying.

"such a large banner is designed and then printed"

Do you mean to say designed in photoshop and printed ?

Btw What i mean to say is this.

@Need feedbak - Web Design & Web Development Forum: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP

Please check the 2nd post as designer has managed to convert the photo in vector form.

With a bit of attention can it be possible to achieve more realistic image ?
 
yes, posters of that size like billboards, politics posters, full building size ad posters, etc are designed on photoshop or such softwares and then printed.

photos of a person or objects on such posters are taken at the highest resolution possible so that loss of quality on transfer during printing is minimum.

printing is done by ctp ( computer to plate ) basically the psd or original format to a printer plate which is used in specialized machines for poster printing ... such machines are huge. printer accepts the specifications of the poster size and enlarges accordingly hence the resolution of images / faces / fonts is important.
 
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