Fellow Brycers, I would like to know what the best resolution would be to create a poster size picture. Should I create it in Bryce and then transfer to Photoshop to blow it up, or what procedure should I use? Any help would be greatly appreciated. Sincerely, Mark A. Sturdivant

Attached Link: http://www.buildaposter.com/

You should render it up to the size you want in Bryce first. Depending on the print resolution you want, ie; 300 dpi, 200 dpi, 150dpi, etc..., calculate how many inches you want the poster to be and multiply the inches by the resolution you want. For example at 300 dpi (dots per inch) a 36"x24" poster will need to be 10,800 x 7200 pixels. This may be a bit large and take a long time to render, so let's say you print at 150 dpi, now you're looking at 5400 x 3750 pixels, much more managable. Depending on the printing process, ie: Duratran, Fiery, etc...the printer may have their own requirements of file type and size. It is always best to check with the printer first to see what res. they can work with. You can check with the guys at this link to see what they require, they also are very reasonably priced.

Exactly Alleycat, you'll never really know till you check with the printer first heheh, them guys can get a lil funky on ya.

Hey, now! :) I used to work at a print shop (not, admittedly, a poster-printing shop; we didn't do one-off or short-run stuff), and I can tell you the lil funky thing goes both ways. I've seen Hell, and it is trying to get CMYK separations on a newsletter built in Microsoft Publisher while the client's standing behind you saying, "But it works on my inkjet at home!" I'm sorry; was that out loud? :)

Yes that was out loud, but a good point. Traditional "offset lithography", ie; big professional quality printing presses, is not really for "one-off" or short run as you say. It requires careful color separation and registration of the separate images for multiple pass printing. It is by far the best quality, and also the most expensive process. If you only want a small quantity of large prints, there are lots of places that specialize in printing with large format inkjet printers and photo process printing on transparency for back lit posters (Duratran). These are also expensive processes and you might spend several hundred dollars to get one good poster. That's why I mentioned buildaposter.com because they are very reasonably priced and you can get an estimate right on the web site.

I've only done 2 images for poster print, and in both instances the printer gave me the dimensions in inches, and wanted them at 300 dpi. They both also wanted them in Photoshop eps format, ( don't know why, the images were raster graphics ) Don't know how much it cost, the client ok'd the image, then the printer contacted me, to give me the resolution needed. If your doing a poster for yourself, I would go with Alleycat's suggestion. I never dealt with buildaposter.com but they looked pretty reasonable when I checked them out ( a while back ).

I've just done some for a US company - they requested 3000 x 2250 pix at 300dpi