Forum Moderators: not2easy
Our company is having a new sign made for the front of our building. Since I am the graphic arts guy as well as the programmer, they turned to me to make the graphic for the printing people to make the sign.
Now, the printing people want the graphic in ‘Line Art EPS’ format. At first I thought ‘fine’ so I took a JPG of our company logo, opened it in photoshop, and then saved it as an EPS, burned it to a disk, and gave it to the sign company.
The sign company called me back and said the disk I sent them was no good. It needed to be line-art EPS, and she said I needed the ‘background cut out’ (?)
Now, I know my way around photoshop, but everything I have done has been either for the web or for print materials. Making a graphic for someone else to cut a sign out of is new to me.
Can anyone help me out? Or, barring that, recommend a good tutorial website so I can get this graphic in the format they require?
(Being the ‘computer guy’ here I hate coming off looking like a dummy)
thanks for any help!
I too am not an Image expert, but I think this will get you headed in the right direction.
It seems an obscure term so phone them up and ask them. I don't think this would make you appear stupid at all.
Shanz
Stay tuned for illustrator questions... lol
You can also create an alpha channel selection and turn it into a vector path - or the other way around. For some tasks, this is all I need. But doing a file for a big sign probably takes more precision - I agree that Illustrator of Freehand is the better choice.
What they are looking for is a Vector image. It gives the appearance of being "cut out" because when you select it you can move it around on a BG and it looks like its on its own Photoshop layer.
What I recommend is that you stick with a program you know such as Photoshop. (Assuming you have Photoshop version 6.0+) This is when they began using vector text and vector shapes.
I then suggest your best bet is to use the JPEG of your company logo as a background and you use layers on top of it to recreate the text and any graphical elements. (Kind of like tracing). Make sure when you configure your settings, you are using inches as a unit of measurement and you are designing in at least 300dpi. [Personally I tend to work with most things at 600dpi just because you can always reduce it later but if you need a bigger version you always have it] Then, make sure you are working in CMYK color mode (Cyan Magenta Yellow blacK not RGB Red Green Blue). So yeah, use CMYK unless they are using PMS colors to print but I think they can make that change for you. (Although you can pick your own Pantone colors in Photoshop).
Note: Pantone is a color matching system. It lets print shops know how to precisely mix a color. All that's required from you is that you have to pick the color you like out of a swatch book.
If you have a copy of illustrator you could either import the picture into illustrator and using the pen draw round it or if you are more comfortable in photoshop use the pen tool you would usually use for creating clipping paths and draw round the shape/letters or whatever your logo is.
Then save the path and I am pretty sure you can go to export, paths to ilustrator. This should then when you open it in illustrator be your logo.
bateman - The only reason I suggested doing the logo that way is because they are familiar with Photoshop.
I think if he/she saves it to an EPS file it will be fine. They can print off of that. That print shop sound like one of those pain in the butt shops already. Personally, I have some friends that work in the printing industry and from what I understand a decent shop can print anything you give to them. (If its a properly sizes and formatted EPS, PSD, PDF, TIFF file etc.)
That said, I've never had a problem scaling a 1200ppi tiff file either... but the file size starts getting a bit out of hand.
The biggest problems I've run into have always been with sign companies though. A lot of them use proprietary software that's specifically designed for their needs, and apparently is very limited in the file types it will "gracefully" accept.
At a local sign shop, there's only one employee who knows how to convert non-eps images into something they can use on their systems... if you work with anyone else in the company, they've got no idea what they're doing beyond putting a disk in the big machine, and pushing the right buttons.
But hey I used to work with many different printing companys and was amazed in how many of them refuse to help anyone beyond apple "p". I even had one the other day that refused to take ilustrator files (even placed in a quark file), only freehand, which not only do i not allow at work, i hate with a passion!
