I was wondering if anyone knew of a service to transfer 3d rendered art to poster size prints? I'm not looking for anything fancy like lithographs, just a simple poster size (preferably movie-style size) print. The first place I thought about was Kinkos, but their service descriptions are very vague. I'd like to get my art transferred unto a poster sometime soon. :P Thanks in advance.

Many of the places that do prints for the advertising industry such as trade shows etc. do print at resonable rates. Check the Yellow Pages for one in your are. Ask if they do poster size printouts in color and at what resolution. The higher the resolution and better the substrate printed to the higher the price.

Attached Link: http://www.kinkos.com/our_services/store_services/signs_banners.php#order_info5

As a former Kinkoid, I can tell you a little about their capabilities. A 2x3 poster on matte paper will run you right around $40. You'll need to make sure you render at a pretty high resolution to get good results. 150dpi at 100% should be adequate. If you save it as a single-image PDF you might save yourself a $10 RIP fee (Raster Image Processing). Most service bureaus will charge at least twice that - at least they used to - but there may be someone around ding it for cheaper these days.

Yeah, those prices kinda suck. I mean, I'll pay it if I have to, but I was gonna try to hand out some on my web site. I know you're paying for the print job, but I was hoping there was something cheaper out there. :P

There may well be. I seem to remember running across a website that advertised poster size prints for cheap, but considering the wait for shipping and not being able to proof a sample for color and quality, I think it might be troublesome. Good luck.

There are several job shops in the US that will give you great rates if you're willing to wait until they have enough jobs to print all at once. Look in the back of PRINT magazine for some of the more reputable.

A really great question. I thought I knew almost all image formats. Single-image PDF----please educate me? How to make? I always render over 3000 pixals or more in the final pic. and usally at 300 dpi. Good enough for the poster size???

At 300 dpi 3000 pixels is only 10 inches wide. You'd need 150 dpi (dots per inch) at 100%. So: 24 inches = 3600 pixels. So a standard 2'x3' poster would have to be 3600x5400 pixels. A single image pdf is essentially just an image document, like a jpeg of tiff except it's made with Adobe Acrobat and is a nearly universal format that is read by the free acrobat reader. It's becoming a standard in the ppublishing industry. Kinkos can't just up and print a tiff or jpeg without first opening it in a graphics program and setting it up to be printed, hence the RIP charge. PDF's open right up and you just hit print.

Thank Hiram I think I see the higher the dpi the sharper the image but also the smaller the output size. Is there some special software to save it as a PDF document needed?

You'd need a full (purchased) copy of Acrobat. That doesn't mean you couldn't do it any other way, it would just save you the RIP fee. "the higher the dpi the sharper the image but also the smaller the output size" Kind of. Basically, you need to have a certain number of dots (pixels) per inch to get a quality print. I recommended at least 150 or so, although I've gotten decent prints at less, and industry standards go up to as high as 300dpi for really slick publications. It follows that the more actual inches wide you want the thing, the more pixels it will have to have.

Attached Link: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~ghost/

Take a look at the attached link for Ghostscript. It is a freeware set of programs that allow to view PDF files and create PDF files from files in PostScript format. It is available for Mac and Windows. If you are using Windows, you can install the Apple Color LaserWriter 12/600 and have it direct the output (Postscript) to a file. Then Ghostscript can be used to convert the postscript file to a PDF.

if you have Photoshop you can save in PDF also. ONe CHEAP option is to print B&W. You could get a 2x3 B&W at kinkos for probably less than $5.