Creating Posters

buckeyenut

I have recently created a few posters in Photoshop but have some questions so I can better understand the outcome.
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I created a 16 x20 poster at 240 dpi. I created a background and whatever else I needed in the poster and then used cut out players from photos and inserted them into my poster.
<o:p> </o:p>
When I inserted the cut out pictures they were typically way too small, so I went back to the orginal cutout and increased the image size and dpi till I got it to where it would come over to the poster and look right.
<o:p> </o:p>
Is that how it should be done? or is there a better way?

<o:p> </o:p>
Does the cut out image lose a lot of pixels in the same way as cropping. If so how do you used cut outs in large posters? The originals were high quality images.
<o:p> </o:p>
Is there a trick to tell how the poster will look when printed at 16x20.

buckeyenut

buckeyenut wrote:

I have recently created a few posters in Photoshop but have some questions so I can better understand the outcome.
<o:p> </o:p>
I created a 16 x20 poster at 240 dpi. I created a background and whatever else I needed in the poster and then used cut out players from photos and inserted them into my poster.
<o:p> </o:p>
When I inserted the cut out pictures they were typically way too small, so I went back to the orginal cutout and increased the image size and dpi till I got it to where it would come over to the poster and look right.
<o:p> </o:p>
Is that how it should be done? or is there a better way?

<o:p> </o:p>
Does the cut out image lose a lot of pixels in the same way as cropping. If so how do you used cut outs in large posters? The originals were high quality images.
<o:p> </o:p>
Is there a trick to tell how the poster will look when printed at 16x20.

Can anyone offer any assistance?

Frog Lady

when you cut out your picture - have an idea what size you want the image to be on your poster and then crop it to that size just around the player(s) you are interested in. For example, on a 16x20 poster, if I want a cut out that will be about 1/2 height, I would crop it so that it is approx. 8" high.

You also want to make sure you have the resolution of the cut out and of the poster the same. So if your poster is 240 dpi, then your cut out should also be 240 dpi. Then it will transfer over at the same size. If the resolution of the cut out is smaller/larger, then there will be a size change.

That's what I did when I made this poster:




hth,

Colleen

jstew

buckeyenut wrote:

Can anyone offer any assistance?

Well, I will try to help but need to know a few things. How are you going to print the final posters? You say the originals were hires what are they exactly. 16x20 is what I would call an enlargement size and if you going to print it with digital projection you could go for less res in your background to start with. 200dpi should do it. Sounds like the people images were pretty small files I looked at you sight and looked at the data of one of your files and see you used a 10mp canon 40D not quite the res for a good quality 16x20 maybe 11x14 size. But what you should do the next time is shoot the images raw res up in post processing at least double. Or use a good file resizing program. Anyways you not loosing pixels when you res up your gaining pixels. The bad thing is that they are just computer created pixels between the original pixels (pixel averaging) interpolation. If your going to print inkjet they probably wont look as good as a chemical print. Anyways just crop a chunk of the file like a 4x6 and print it to see what it will look like. There are some very good programs out there for simulating on screen what the print will look like but its not cheep and if you had them (software, calibrated monitor) I would think you would own the latest and greatest Digital camera. I have to be careful but different people have different ideas of what is a quality image.

Art Scott

Frog Lady wrote:

when you cut out your picture - have an idea what size you want the image to be on your poster and then crop it to that size just around the player(s) you are interested in. For example, on a 16x20 poster, if I want a cut out that will be about 1/2 height, I would crop it so that it is approx. 8" high.

You also want to make sure you have the resolution of the cut out and of the poster the same. So if your poster is 240 dpi, then your cut out should also be 240 dpi. Then it will transfer over at the same size. If the resolution of the cut out is smaller/larger, then there will be a size change.

That's what I did when I made this poster:




hth,

Colleen

I agree here and will take it a bit futher.....I would resize in PS under the tab of image size and in that dialogue box make sure the constrain proportions is checked.....then change the dpi to match your poster background.....clik ok ......now your file and bg have matching dpi's .....crop as stated above and see how big your image is now.....if it is good enuff use it .....it it is too small then get a trial version of Genuine Fractals and up rez to the needed size at your desired dpi......with GF trial version you get like 20-30 files you can save....it is a complete total fully working version. This is how I have done all of my posters in the past.

Good luck

TonyCooper

Nothing about making posters....but your out-of-frame individual shots are well done. I don't see that technique used much, and that adds to the interest. Makes some rather ordinary shots look more interesting.

(Not that the shots are ordinary in a bad way, but it's very difficult to make that type of shot anything other than ordinary.)

kwcrow

If you are using photoshop cs3 or later, make sure you convert your photo to a smart object when you bring it into your poster as a layer. This will allow you to use transform resizing as many times as you like to get it correct without damaging the original pixels. Also, make sure that your default resize method is Bicubic Smoother which adobe says iHs best for enlargements. I have done over 200 sports posters using the cut-out technique and they are 20" X 30" in size. I start with a 6000 X 4000 pixel image to work with. This gives me a 200 dpi final image which turns out the proper resolution. I usually try to keep from resizing the individual images any more than double if possible. Here are some examples of my work. http://www.kcrow.com/photography/montage/