Adding Photos to Display Banners

Adding full color photos and illustrations to large vinyl banners will create banner designs with more impact and a much more professional appearance. Putting a full color photograph on your vinyl banner is usually the easiest and best way to do this.

When you intend to add a photo or graphic image to a vinyl banner design, try to keep a few things in mind. For the image to look clear and crisp an image really should be saved in the correct resolution. For most large display projects such as vinyl banners, display backdrops, window graphic, and popup displays, a resolution of about 100 ppi (pixels per inch) at full size is sufficient.

In other words if you have an original image that is 300 ppi at 8" x 10",then you can comfortably blow it up to about 24" x 30". That will give you a final resolution of 100 ppi. In fact you can probably go as low as 50 ppi and still get good quality output, because these displays are normally created to be viewed from a distance of at least 10 feet away.

Second, you should almost always brighten up the colors of your vinyl banner images. You can usually do this by increasing the contrast. In Photoshop the most effective way to do this is by "pinching" the levels controls. Open the levels control window and pull the control for the shadows towards the middle (to the right). Then pull the highlights control to the left. This has the effect of brightening your light colors and darkening your shadows while getting rid of some of the "mudiness" of the mid tones.

"Sharpening" your images will also have a brightening effect. Your images will normally appear much crisper and sharper when you "punch them up" with a bit of sharpening. But don't sharpen them too much.

Last but not least, we recommend working in CMYK mode rather than RGB. Vinyl graphics and other large format graphics are almost always printed on CMYK printing devices with solvent inks. If you send RGB images to the printer you are counting on your printer to make the conversion to CMYK. This is often not as reliable as converting them yourself before sending the images down to the printer. RGB can be somewhat misleading since it has a broader color "gamut" than CMYK.

What that means is that there are colors you can see on a computer monitor that you simply cannot reproduce with CMYK inks especially not with solvent based inks on a medium such as vinyl. You really should know this before you get the printing done. If it is important to create a specific color and if time permits a proof can be produced on the actual vinyl banner material to give you a clear picture of how it will look when printed.

Another important point to realized is that the choice of ink will have an impact on the durability of the job. Outdoor projects should be printed with true solvent inks because they are best for full color printing intended for use in harsh sunlight or other harsh weather conditions such as rain or snow.

Solvent inks do not fade as quickly when exposed to UV rays, and stand up to wind and rain much better. Non solvent inks will fade much more quickly in direct sunlight. Even for indoor projects it is often better to use solvent-based inks because they produce a much more durable final result. This is especially important for situations that require graphics which will be rolled and unrolled many times, and be subjected to a lot of handling.

For more advice on producing graphics for trade shows (http://www.trade-show-tips.com) and displays contact the display printing experts (http://www.tradeshow-display-experts.com) at TradeShow-Display-Experts.com