Putting Images on Large Vinyl Banners

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Putting Images on Large Vinyl Banners

by Rick Hendershot, Linknet Creative Resource Library

Adding full color images to vinyl banners will create banner designs with more impact and a more professional appearance. Putting a full color photograph on your vinyl banner is often the easiest way to do this. When you want to add a photo or image to a vinyl banner design, try to keep a few things in mind. In order to look crisp and clear an image must have the correct resolution. At America-Banners.com we try to keep resolution at about 100 ppi (pixels per inch) at full size. In other words if you have an image that is 300 ppi at 8" x 10", then you can comfortably blow it up to about 24" x 30" (which will give you 100 ppi). In fact you can probably go as low as 50 ppi and still be quite satisfied with the output, because these images are normally meant to be viewed from a distance of at least 10 feet away.

Second, it is often necessary to brighten up the colors of your vinyl banner images. You can usually do this by increasing the contrast. In Photoshop the easiest way to do this is by "pinching" the levels. Open the levels window and pull the shadows (dark shades) control towards the middle (to the right), and pull the highlights control to the left. This will brighten your light colors and darken your dark colors 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 go overboard.

Finally, we recommend working in CMYK mode rather than RGB. Vinyl banners at America-Banners.com are printed on CMYK printing devices using solvent inks. Rather than counting on the printing system to convert your RGB (the default color system used on the computer) convert it yourself so you can see what you are going to get. RGB can be misleading since it has a broader color "gamut" than CMYK. There are colors you can see on a computer monitor that you simply cannot reproduce with CMYK inks — especially not with solvent inks on a medium like vinyl. You might as well know this before you get the printing done. If it is important to reproduce a specific color — and if you have time — a proof can be produced on the actual vinyl banner material to show you how it will look.

At America-Banners.com we use true solvent inks because they are ideal for full color printing intended for use in bright sunlight or other harsh weather conditions (such as rain). Solvent inks resist fading due to UV exposure, and stand up to wind and rain. Non solvent inks will fade in bright sunlight. Using images (photos, logos, special artwork, etc.) on your banners is a great idea, but we don't recommend using this approach for outside projects unless they are being printed with solvent inks. Solvent inks are also produce much more durable vinyl banners for applications like trade show banners or event backdrops where they will be rolled or faded many times, and handled a lot.

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