Creating a truly impressive poster requires both planning and patience. This blog post will cover the basics of poster printing and guide you through the process of preparing your artwork for submission to your local print shop.
Custom poster printing can be a challenge! Graphics Printing NY Printing is committed to providing additional assistance with printing posters of all sizes, including scaling vector graphics up or down for standard 18 X 24 poster printing. We have assisted thousands of customers in printing posters, and we are dedicated to making the process as simple as possible for you! When New Yorkers inquire, “Where can I print a poster?” the design community directs them to Graphics Printing NY Printing.
How to Print a Poster in Seven Easy Steps
This guide goes through the steps of printing a poster in seven phases, highlighting the value of planning ahead with design decisions. It covers a variety of medium choices, including glossy or matte poster paper, card stock, and foam core board, as well as printing techniques including digital printing, screen printing, lithography, flexography, and letterpress. Even though the material is mostly focused on digital custom poster printing, it is applicable to other printing methods as well, such as conventional photography and hand-drawn art that are frequently digitalized for use in contemporary printing procedures.
1. Choose a Digital Color Processor.
Are you trying to figure out what digital color technique works best for printing a poster? You’ll get the best color fidelity using CMYK. If you started your design in RGB mode, you may convert RGB to CMYK using the settings files in Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, and InDesign. Pro-level design suites like Adobe CC Suite may be replaced at a lower cost using online illustration and design tools like RGB-based Canva. But you’ll need to use an external converter to convert Canva-style files to CMYK. Review your color output thereafter. It’s possible that certain parts of your design require spot checks and color adjustments. This could also apply to photos of hand-drawn posters; you might need to do some digital editing.
2. Adjust the Orientation, Size, and Resolution
The minimal resolution for poster printing is 300 DPI, or dots per inch. If you set the DPI lower than 300, your printed graphics and text will seem hazy.
Pick your poster size before you begin to create. Standard poster sizes are available for selection in your options, or you may resize your design to accommodate even bigger sheets.
The typical poster size choices in the US are:
24 x 36 (Large)
18 x 24 (Medium)
11 x 17 inches (small)
8.5 x 11 inches (Letter)
The following unique poster sizes are:
14″ x 22″ (Theatrical Window Card Poster).
27″ x 40″ (One-Sheet, Movie/Theatrical)
40″ x 60″ inches (Bus stop/subway poster size)
Pop-culture shop posters are often printed in 24″ x 36″ or 22″ x 34″.
Regardless of size, creating in the appropriate orientation mode is essential to the effectiveness of the design, whether it be landscape (horizontal) or portrait
3. Adjust Bleed and Cut
Printers can precisely cut your posters to size with the help of the bleed and trim settings.
The border encircling your printed item is called the trim line. By organizing the information inside the bounds of the trim line, you may avoid accidently shearing off critical text during the printing process. For your trim line, it would be ideal to leave 1/8th of an inch on all four sides of your poster.
The bleed is the excess area that extends past the trim, giving you more leeway to make trimming mistakes.
4. Implement font and spell checking
You should get a second pair of eyes to examine these areas because spelling, grammar, and font consistency are typically overlooked by design software. Errors that you may overlook will be seen by your friends and coworkers.
5. Ready for Transfer
This pre-printing process ensures that your print file contains the font files you want for your poster. Additionally, this procedure guarantees that the text components in your poster design scale both vertically and horizontally in accordance with the vector pictures. Additionally, it guarantees that your files will print accurately in the event that the typefaces you chose for your custom poster printing project are not licensed to your print shop.
Different approaches are used by the popular poster design programs to lock in fonts so that they display appropriately when printing personalized posters. To put it briefly, Illustrator utilizes “Convert to Shape” to transform fonts into shapes inside the design, Photoshop uses “Flatten Image,” and InDesign uses “Package.”
6. Export Data in the Correct Formats
Files intended for poster printing must be exported in PDF or TIFF format. Make sure your print resolution is set to 300 DPI in your application before submitting your file as a PDF. If you’re sending your file as a TIFF, you will need to confirm that your file remains uncompressed and that the DPI remains at 300.
7. Start the Print
The last step is to print your poster once it has been formatted and prepared! Selecting a printing substance is the last stage. Typical poster materials consist of:
Paperboard
Vinyl
Polyester
Selecting the appropriate materials for the project is essential. Vinyl posters are more weather resistant than other alternatives if you intend to display your poster outside in NYC. Paperboard should work perfectly if you plan to set up your poster indoors as part of a display.
Vinyl poster printing is made easy with Graphics Printing NY
If you’re new to designing and printing posters, you might have read down to the very end because you’re overwhelmed and want to know all there is to know about poster printing settings assistance. You may be confident that our print design staff will assist you with printing your poster. We also assist with poster design! We will provide to you actual examples of the many custom poster printing projects that we are working on behalf of our clients. It is a benefit of working with a nearby print shop. Having worked with professional poster designers for more than 40 years, we have an extensive understanding of poster printing. And we’re here to assist you in completing your poster printing job precisely and on time. Contact with us right now to schedule a free project consultation. We’ll show you how to print your next poster quickly and accurately.
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