How To Make A Small JPG Work For Large Printed Banners
You might have created a small JPG image of your brand, logo or company design for online media, like social media or small printed promotional products.
But now you’re stuck with this small, fuzzy JPG, and your printing company is telling you there’s no way it will work for large banners.
Here’s 3 things you can do to get the print quality crisp and clear for your next banner.
1. Send Your Image To A Graphic Designer to Vectorize It
Vectorizing the image is the process of tracing over the bitmap image with vector lines and shapes, which can then be filled with color.
The result is a stunningly sharp design, since vector lines can be enlarged infinitely without losing quality. You can print a massive 20’ x 30’ backdrop with pixel perfect colors, exactly the same as a 10” x 10” would look!
It’s also usually inexpensive – typical costs range from $30 – $80. Check out this article for information on how much it costs to vectorize an image.
But some images can never be vectorized. Images that are photographic, or that have a large variety of intricate designs with many transitional colors that blend into each other cannot be vectorized.
That’s because vectorization, as we explained earlier, involves lines and shapes. Simpler art will be the perfect candidate for vectorization, but complex designs often won’t turn out right unless they are dramatically simplified – which ruins the look and feel of your original branding.
Get in touch with us to find out if your design is a good fit for vectorization. Our graphic designers are experts at vectorizing difficult images.
2. Ask The Original Designer For The Original Design Files
This is the best solution, but often the most difficult. Just ask the original graphic designer for the Photoshop or Illustrator design files.
That will give your printer the original layered files that we can then manipulate and save correctly for a large printed banner.
However, this doesn’t always work; graphic designers won’t save your designs forever. Original design files can be more than 1 gigabyte in size, so they won’t save your files years onwards from the job.
3. Have A Freelance Designer On Fiverr Or Upwork Recreate It
If those all fail, don’t stress that you have go back and reinvest hundreds – or thousands – of dollars on your design work. Simply hop on to Fiverr.com, or Upwork.com, and hire a freelance graphic designer to recreate the design from scratch for an affordable price.
You’ll be surprised how much deep talent exists on these platforms. With your old design already created, they won’t need too much creativity or time to create a replica of your design.
But this time around – save the original design files!
Don’t just grab that JPG and run.
You should be downloading and saving something that is at least 25 MB in size, if not larger, and it should be in the format of one of these: .ai .pdf .psd .tif .pbs
If you’d like to have your design checked out by one of our banner experts, upload it right here and we’ll be happy to validate your files and recommend the best possible solution for high quality printing.
