Mega Banner Design

[purifier]

The maximum size of the banner I'm able to design now is a 7ftx7ft banner. Is it possible to design a bigger size banner in Xara?

[salaam]

Try searching:
'Banner size'
In this forum
This topic has been covered before

[purifier]

I've seen it months back.. I was searching but couldn't get it. Maybe I missed it somewhere

[amoore]

I believe you can do it with a scale factor. Look at the Scaling tab in Options.

[Tao jones]

Hi, here is a list of some of the ways to do large banners in xara...tao


1 'One safe way is to produce a very large TIFF or PNG file. That way you are guaranteed the fonts will be correct and there will be no issues with things like transparency that can upset some PDF readers (PDF would be the other recommended way of outputting the files).

If you do this it doesn't really matter that the page you're creating is really 3m x 1m, just that it's the correct proportions. So you could have a page 30cm by 10cm and then export that as a hi-resolution PNG or TIFF file.

The key restriction to know is that Xara can produce bitmaps up to about 16,000 pixel wide or tall. This is more than enough for just about any sized poster. 3m is about 118 inches, so if you exported a bitmap that was 16,000 pixels wide that would be equivalent to about 130 dpi, which is way more resolution that you'd require for a poster (they could come up to the poster and look with a magnifying glass to see the pixels).

When exporting a TIFF file it defaults to only outputting the region that contains any graphics, rather than the whole page. To solve this, draw an invisible rectangle around the outside of the page (no fill or line color), and make sure it's selected before you export as TIFF. That way it will export the correct size. When exporting PNG images you have more controls and can select to save the whole page, drawing or selection.

Your printer should be able to take PNG or TIFF, unless they are living in the dark ages and might only accept TIFF. When exporting make you sure select 24 bits per pixel for TIFF and True Color for PNG export.

So the steps to produce a successful poster
• Get the paper proportions right size right. It doesn't need to be the full size. So instead of having a page size of 3m x 1m, create a page 30cm x 10cm.
• If exporting as TIFF, create an invisible rectangle around the outside of the area you want to print and make sure it's selected before you export.
• Select File -> Export and select TIFF or PNG file types.
• Set the width or height to be 16,000 pixels if you want maximum resolution (you only need to set the width or the height, not both as it calculates the other value for you). You will see the dpi figure change, but you can ignore this.
• Make sure you've selected a color depth of 24 bits-per-pixel or True Color
• Select Export
• You can preview the file in Windows Picture Viewer to check it's OK (although be aware the images as large as 16,000 pixel are sometimes beyond what the Picture Viewer can cope with)
• Burn file to CD and send to printers.

If producing images of 16,000 pixels wide be aware that you will typically be producing files of 100 Megapixels, or more, and so this will produce quite large files.'


2 Hi I own a sign shop and use Xara X1 and Xtreme all the time, heres a hint to create a large banner, make a rectangle any size convert it to shape, place your graphics in front of the banner select all, and resize proportionately at the top with the measurement box, size limitation is no problem.

Also no need to change page size, just move off the white area of the screen onto the grey part, you can even save out as a 16 bit tiff, depending on the size, I have saved 11x17 at 600 dpi, and up to 188.5 inches at 100 dpi.

[purifier]

Thank you so much... Thats so nice of you to take time to write down everything... Thank you once again...