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Image sizing for large format projects?
I have a question I hope someone can help me with. I am creating large banners for Trade Shows. The finished banners are over 71″ x 31″. If the beauty of vector imaging is the fact that you can resize it without any loss, do I need to make these files full size or can I make them 1/10th the size and scale them back to size when i’m finished? These banners are made up of tons of images, layers and effects, which cause things like redraws and saving to be excruciatingly slow. I finished ONE today and it is 486mb! Hefty!
I had to research how to make a pdf out of it for clients’ proofing before I could even get it to do that (the pdf turned out to be 40 mb). You see the dilemma?
I would prefer not to put a whole lot of work into making the next one wrong, if I try the resizing thing, so I thought I’d see if anyone out there has the answer.
thanks in advance!
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2 Replies
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Christy, as long as your files (banners) do not contain any pixel images (links from Photoshop, .tif, .jpgs, etc) you can make them super small and then scale them up when you are ready to deliver, however, same way they do not pixelate/degrade they also do not increase its file size by working at a smaller proportion; probably you are leaving the “link” option unchecked when placing external images on your Illustrator file, which is causing the foreign object to be effectively embedded into your document and dramatically increasing its size. Effects in illustrator are also known for seriously decreasing performance, whenever possible avoid them and create them directly in Photoshop. Also if you have large portions of text (I mean more than one paragraph) you might want to switch to Indesign, Illustrator is brought to its knees as soon as you start putting lots of text on it, specially if it linked among paragraphs.
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Yoiu can build your design at 1/10 scale if you want. Make sure your placed bitmap images are built to their exact size, so the resolution is there, so when the file is scaled to 1/1 the data is there so the images turn out properly.
https://www.youtube.com/graphicsdump
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