Printer needs trade show banner in 120 dpi. How to set?

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
July 21, 2022
1 reply
639 views

In Photoshop I can easily set the image resolution to whatever I want. I started some graphics there, but now I want to do some layout stuff that's a little easier in InDesign. The printer asked for the submitted file to be in 120 dpi, but I'm not seeing a place to handle that.

Any experience on this or similar workflows you can share? Thanks.

How to

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Correct answer James Gifford—NitroPress

What format do they want the print file in? I assume PDF...

If your layout is entire InDesign elements (all vector/font based), the resolution of the PDF will be moot.

If you have raster image content, it should be sized to 120ppi for the effective print size (that is, if a logo needs to be 20 inches across, it should be 2400 pixels across in the layout).

Larger images are okay, too; if the logo is 3600 or 4800 pixels across, it's not a problem.

When you export the PDF, set the resolution to 120dpi/ppi for all image types.

It's unlikely, but check if the printer has a specific color profile you should use, and whether the PDF should be RGB (probably) or CMYK. They really should have a complete file spec page somewhere for these details, but LF printers... well.

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James Gifford—NitroPressCorrect answer

Legend

What format do they want the print file in? I assume PDF...

If your layout is entire InDesign elements (all vector/font based), the resolution of the PDF will be moot.

If you have raster image content, it should be sized to 120ppi for the effective print size (that is, if a logo needs to be 20 inches across, it should be 2400 pixels across in the layout).

Larger images are okay, too; if the logo is 3600 or 4800 pixels across, it's not a problem.

When you export the PDF, set the resolution to 120dpi/ppi for all image types.

It's unlikely, but check if the printer has a specific color profile you should use, and whether the PDF should be RGB (probably) or CMYK. They really should have a complete file spec page somewhere for these details, but LF printers... well.

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Peter Spier

Community Expert

>> When you export the PDF, set the resolution to 120dpi/ppi for all image types.

That's presuming you've designed at 100% scale. For a large banner you may have to do the layout at half-size or smaller and let the printer scale it up. If that's the case, you would need the resolution to be higher by the same scale factor.

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

All true. It's always a tradeoff doing large format stuff. Of course, a lot of older software couldn't go past 40-50 inch dimensions, so it was necessary then.

I long used 1 pica = 1 in just to keep the numbers reasonable, but then you have to think about scaling any non-vector elements. I haven't done any LF recently but I'm pretty sure the last rounds were all at 1:1 just for simplicity. I don't think it affects either INDD or PDF file size, all things considered.

But it's often weird working in dozens or hundreds of inches and multi-thousand-pixel logo images and such if you do page layout most of the time. 🙂

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