Large Format Printing

Large Format Printing

Large format printing is nowadays very famous because it is a very efficient and convenient method of printing. Large format printers is a very powerful tool which are used for production of hard copies of images like technical paintings, drawings, office documents and other images. Large format printing is an integral part of electronic document management. The first step in this printing is scanning. Thus a good large format printer is required to have effective scanning capabilities.

The need for effective scanning is required because good scanning can produce enlarge images even form the drawings stored on microfilm. For effective printing medium scanning is required for the conversion of actual drawing into microfilm. To produce a large format printing the scanning must be done at high resolution so that all the details are visible in enlarged copy thus giving a good quality photo. For the purpose of enlarged printing you can us inkjet type of printer. The best and newest technology of printing is UV curable inkjet printing.

Some good printing can be achieved with the help of HP Design Jet 815 MFP printer. This printer is also a scanner having a scanning resolution of 2400x1200 dpi. This high resolution makes it suitable for scanning microfilms and it is also capable of handling rigid and thick media so your needs of large format printing can be easily achieved. A good printer-scanner is designed to handle GIS, graphics and CAD output. Some of the best printers that produce large formats are capable of scanning and printing both black and white and color images. For printing purpose you can use a thermal inkjet type printer. The results are highly desirable with widths of up to 40 inches and media as long as 55 feet.

Another all in one color printer, scanner and copier is Epson Stylus DX4800. Its scanner is very efficient giving a resolution of about 5760x1440 optimized dpi that too on qualified media. It gives a very high speed printing experience and is capable of printing twenty pages per minute. The scanning area of this combo device is 206mm x 295mm. The quality of printing is excellent though it does not provide a very high printing width. The scanning speed of scanner is about 30msec per line at a maximum resolution of 1200dpi. If the scanning resolution is lowered say about 300 dpi and 600 dpi then it gives better speeds 10msec and 15msec per line respectively.

It is recommended that you must carefully outline your needs from a printer. If you are planning to buy such machine then you should go for one which satisfies all your needs of printing and scanning.

Here are some tips to obtain large format printing

• You must carefully select the layout of files. For instance you are having a jpeg, gif or any other graphics format file for printing. You can use adobe Photoshop for purpose of printing but if they have a size of 10k-800k then you won’t get good print.
• If you want best results in long format printing then it is advised use color or laser proof printer-scanner. Also remember not to send fonts to any specific files. You must carefully outline all type in vector files which can be freehand EPS or illustrator EPS and in Illustrator Raster Images Files which can be a Photoshop EPS.
• For effective printing you must use pixel & resolution based images. If you are using large bitmap images then they might occupy large space on your hard disks also it takes time in transferring them. By cropping, rotating and scaling high-resolution images you can save a lot of time in scanning. To save time you can also insert a photo manipulation program before getting the actual layout.
•  For instance you want a final size of about 30’’ by 40’’ at a resolution of about 10 dpi or any other size. Then you must keep the file size at least 48 MB. It’s simply because different devices attain different sizes so you must ensure that correct size has been used for the purpose of printing.
• To achieve a standardized printing you can use Vector Images. Vector images can be frequently used for logos and other images in your layout. The objective behind using vector images is that they give sharp lines, consistent and clean edges keeping the image enlarged. You can use Illustrator or Freehand EPS file formats for this purpose.
• To achieve good printing format you must create bleeds. For best results all the files must have at least ¼ inch of bleed in the output around them. To increase bleed requirements you can also use extra long plots and banners or any other such special items. For this purpose you must carefully study the printer guide.

Large Format Printing