Printing question

[ber61]

I have created this picture in Xara. We want to print it at a size of 11 by 14. The question I have is should I use a pdf file to do this or is a jpeg the better way to proceed. This is my first really large design and want it to look right. Thanks Richard.

[Albacore]

Looks like maybe a scanned copy of a picture or is it vector? What does the the info bar state the dpi is when you bring it in to Xara if it is a scanned copy. Any method you mentioned is fine but I might think about exporting it as .tiff file if you are taking it down to your local digital print shop as Jpeg always have some form of losses in quality. Also most drawings will print well down to 150 dpi if you stretch your drawing but remember to put your aspect lock on.

[ber61]

The original is 38 inches wide at 300 dpi. Yes Albacore I do wish to run down to the local digital printer and thanks for the advise on the tiff.

[Gamerprinter]

Ah, then you're not spoiled like me. I run a digital print/graphic design studio and print directly from Xara in .XAR format to either at the original size (38 inches wide) and/or at 11 x 14. I have both a Canon IPF760 and IPF8100 (a 36" wide and a 42" wide large format inkjet printers), and a Ricoh MP C2051 color copier/printer. Its really easy for me to just create in Xara and print - I don't even need to save the file and often don't for one-off jobs.

I do recommend .TIF as well, though .JPG doesn't degrade much unless you save it more than 1 time. A lot of digital print shops prefer PDF as the easiest format to work with - even at high resolution (and it still saves full color to JPG format).

[ber61]

Thanks Gamerprinter. No i am not spoiled like you, wish I was, I do not even have a printer hooked to any of my 3 computers. I have one in my room just not hooked up, my girlfriends computer has one hooked up. My goal is to have it set so they just have to print it, might not be a good goal.

[Gamerprinter]

Where I'm really spoiled, that Canon IPF760 comes with a 36 inch, full color, roll-type scanner. For years I would scan 24" x 36" color CAD plot (or photo) on an 11" x 17" flatbed scanner, by scanning one corner area, slide it over 16ish inches, scan and repeat. Remove the scanner lid, move the plot up 10ish inches and repeat the process until complete - then I had to piece together 9 scans into a single 24 x 36 again, which takes up to a half hour as a total process for a single large format print (and was a real pain in the butt process to deal with). Now I just insert the original, tell the scanner the resolution and file type and it scans automatically - wow, huge time saver.

When creating hand-drawn maps finished in Xara, I draw as large as I need, scan, import and finish - it works great.