Print Out Not Good

[BeanPole]

This is a spin off from the tutorial by Stygg on Surreal Backgrounds.

I decided to try to create a sky, without clouds, figuring I could add in clouds as needed and to use the sky as a standard sky backdrop.

So, I tried 3 variations.

1) BLEND - a light sky blue bottom rectangle strip and a deep sky blue top rectangle strip. I blended using 50 steps. Sky looked great! Then I exported at 300dpi for printing in JPG and again as PNG

2) TRANSPARENCY - a light blue rectangle, with a dark sky blue rectangle on top using a linear transparency. Sky looked great! The I exported at 300dpi for printing in JPG and again as PNG

3) BITMAP TRACER - I used the bitmap tracer to trace my original photo. I set at 20 passes, remove noise to 50, color tolerance set to 0, and accuracy set to 100. Sky didn't look great as there was two jagged white lines across the sky. Then I exported at 300dpi for printing in JPG and again as PNG

Then, I sent the electronic files to Don's Photo and had a 4 x 6 printout of each variation.

Unfortunately, none of them were acceptable.

The bitmap tracer photo had very obvious color sections (both JPG and PNG)
The blend photo had very obvious horizontal color lines (both JPG and PNG)
The transparency photo also had very obvious horizontal color lines (both JPG and PNG)

Any ideas on how to create the sky so these horizontal lines don't show up in the printing?

Very disappointing that the transparency and the blend looked so good on the computer screen, but did not print out well.

[Albacore]

You will always get very slight banding, really mean very slight! Will depend on many things, what type of printer is the most important, then what type of paper you are using. Then if you were sending them to Don's Photo what type of file, .psd, PDF, .tiff .png would be in that order but please remember that PDF would be in CMYK colour profile.

I would use certainly more than just blends or transparencies I would used both and would certainly use than one transparency to get the effect you want.

[gwpriester]

I might be missing the point here, but I would use a simple Linear fill. The gray cloudy sky is a Fractal fill but the rest are two and three color gradient fills.

[pauland]

Is it possible that this is being printed out from a page with low pixel dimensions resulting in low quality because everything is being stretched?

The original tutorial had quite small pixel dimensions, which would look good on screen but perhaps not printed.

[BeanPole]

Pauland:

I started the blend sky and the transparency sky creating rectangles that went from edge to edge on a 8 1/2 by 11 page, so the original I was starting with was about 8inches x 8 inches, then exported to 300 dpi. So, not sure if I could have created in higher pixel dimensions or not.

gwpriester:

I could try the linear fill as you suggested but being that it works, more or less, like the transparency (fading into next color) not sure this would correct the banding when printed. (Looked great on screen)

[BeanPole]

Albacore:

It is important for me to be able to print my "art". Beautiful screen art may look great on the web, but I'm thinking more like (on some art) being able to print poster size, or larger.

I am very much a green horn when it comes to the pdf format. I always thought that was more a text format. If pdf format is in CMYK, how would I prepare the page for printing?

PSD might be the way to go if it is the best file format for exporting for printout. Do I need to do anything special to save as PSD?

[pauland]

If you're happy to post the file, maybe someone could take a look and eliminate the guesswork?

[BeanPole]

Posted here are the 300 dpi PNG files. One is using the blend, and the other is using the transparency layer.

[BeanPole]

Posted here is a newer version of the blend. This one I used 200 step (rather than 50) and I used a lighter blue for horizon and a darker blue for deep sky.

This one I have not had a chance to professionally print, so I do not know if this one prints any better or not.

[BeanPole]

These two attachments are my Xara files, from which I saved the png Layers and Blend files.


SkyLayers.xar

SkyBlend.xar