Photography Thailand Forum

[Marc Schultz]

I need to make a few large inkjet photo prints (roughly 3 meter squared) on that plastic material they use for banners. I have seen shops around in Bangkok. Some in MBK, Panthip, Fortune, and other places. My guess is the prices at MBK are the highest and Fortune are the lowest of the above 3 places. What I was wondering though is if anyone has had any experience making these kind of prints in general and have any thoughts on where is the best place to get them done would be in terms of both cost and quality?

[Adzz]

These guys do a lot of stuff round here Mark
Sign Tech 038-426-359 37/3 M.10 South Pattaya Rd, Pattaya City
A lot of companies doing large format signage here, so the prices might be competitive.
Could be useful for a price check.

Its really ruff print quality on that plastic stuff and it doesn't last long UV wise. Think some of these people are happy with about 45dpi like on the old electrostatic printers. But doesn't mater with a long viewing distance anyway does it.
I would opt to do a test print/patch before you run with the big output.

Good luck..

[bjorn slis]

Hi Marc, I do a lot of this stuff here in Chiang Mai.
Of course you will do it in Bkk, but my experience.
I get very good results here for 120 baht per square meter.
Be sure to tell them to use the highest DPI possible, when you are not looking they tend to lower the DPI to be able to work faster, so be sure to be there when they do the first printing, or give a couple of companies a small sample first.
The difference in quality between companies is often huge. (bad ink, bad material, color management etc.)

in case anybody wants to print banners in Chiang Mai, Kiku graphic is absolutely the best one i have found

[Marc Schultz]

Thanks Adam and Bjorn. Great feedback.

Bjorn - What you say about the quality being so different from place to place is what worries me. Since you have a relationship with Kiku graphic, and you think their quality is good, would you mind to ask them if they have anyone they recommend in Bangkok?

Adam - Thanks for your recommendation. Pattaya is not so convenient for me. I could do it there if necessary, but Bangkok would be the ideal place.

Basically what I am looking to do is to create some studio backgrounds to use for conceptual shots. I am planning to print from vector graphics, so the quality of the native image would be high, but what I want to do is create business environment studio backgrounds. It could be a background made from a graphic of something that represents business and technology or it might be an office building lobby for example. I don't expect them to look real, and that is OK, because the shots would just be conceptual anyway, but a decent print is still important I think for the background to look good. I don't have much experience with what sort of DPI would be needed at a size of 3x3 meters when shooting from about 5 meters away, but maybe something around 150 DPI is what is needed. I have a feeling 45 DPI is going to be way too low.

If you guys could possibly offer any further input that would be great.

[Adzz]

Hi Mark, if your using it as a BG for a shoot. I have done that before using prints overlapped and intercut  so that you can get the width.
About the 45dpi thing, Its all about viewing distance, if your not close it doesn't mater,for example  the screen size on old sheet posters (bill boards) was huge. Most of the repro in those times were generated from a set of films equivalent to A3 @ 300dpi. and then enlarged up to make 48sheet posters, but because you view it from a distance ,it looks fine.
Another example was a job I did for a UK supermarket, some of the images where up to 2 meters high X up to 20 meters long! Photoshop has a maximum pixel dimension of 300,000 pixels now, In those days I remember it to be some what less than that perhaps. So the Job was done in an application called "live picture" and the files were made in slices and rendered to the output dimensions at about 65dpi to be printed. The sliced where restricted by the maximum amount of pixels in the file that the printer could open and run. I thought we would get a bad looking result running files that were 65dpi, but when it was all up in store WOW! A lot of it was from electrostatic printers too. All because of viewing distance.
So keep an open mind and try a few tests.
Regards Adam

[Marc Schultz]

Thanks Adam. I hear what you are saying. But what I am planning to print will only be about 10 feet squared. Not very big and not viewed from very far away. That is why I thought I might need closer to 150 DPI. Cheers.

[Adzz]

 304.8cm X 304.8cm RGB , 150dpi = 927 meg file

 304.8cm X 304.8cm RGB , 200dpi = 1.61gig file

 304.8cm X 304.8cm RGB , 300dpi = 3.62gig file

So I guess its what ever file size you can get the lab to run without complaining.

[Marc Schultz]

Cheers Adam. I didn't consider that. Obviously file size will be too big at 150 DPI as you pointed out. I guess I will need to figure out what will be the minimum optimal DPI that will be needed to view something at a distance of about 5 meters which is 3 meters squared in size. If 45 DPI will do it, that will be great, but somehow I feel that the print itself might fall too short on quality. I am also wondering if there is an equation to figure out what DPI is needed based upon print size and viewing distance? There must be a formula that the ad agencies use as a general rule of thumb.

[Adzz]

Well I don't think a 1gig file is to much to hand off to a good lab these days.
If the Image is mostly graphic you can always hand it as a EPS file for them to RIP.

[bjorn slis]

Marc you say you are using vector graphics. I don't see the file size problem then, just make the vector file in Illustrator and give the printer that file.
There is only a filesize problem when you use a pixel file, because you can't enlarge that without loss of quality.

[Adzz]

Yep Bjorn is right, I missed you saying your doing the image with as vector art, in the later post.
It can be RIP'ed to any dpi and size if it's a vector based file.

Just one thing with using it big as a BG, make sure you have a good way to mount/stretch it completely flat.

Would be nice to see the results when you have it done.

Regards Adam

[Marc Schultz]

Sorry, I should have clarified. The images were created from vector graphics, but I have downloaded them from stock photo sites as JPGs. So they are a fixed size now. So yes, they are very sharp and the files contain no noise, artifacts, and banding or posterization like pixels from a photo might. So I can probably interpolate them a bit, but there is certainly a limit to how much I can upsize them I am afraid.

[bjorn slis]

Illustrator has an option to convert rasterized files back to vector files, you could try that.
Just pm me if you need help with it.

[Marc Schultz]

Interesting Bjorn, thanks. Does it redraw the vector lines or how does it do that? And can it do it from both JPG & TIF files? I'll take a look in AI. Cheers.

[bjorn slis]

Hi just open the file in Illustrator, slect it and you will get a menu called "live trace" click that and then you can play with some settings until you get the result you want. (next to the preset selection menu there is a small icon that let's you refine those presets)
I use it a lot when clients only have a small jpg from their logo for example.