#Ram woes
Harold, You mentioned in your message- >>reproduced at poster size (up to 6000
ppi)<<, are you doing four color offset printing or are you using a
dye-sub/inkjet printing. These various types of printers will make a big
difference in the final output resolution. With inkjet printing you are looking
at 300 dpi and if you are making a poster 24 x 36 at 300 dpi the file size will
be around 77.76 megs.- 3DS output would be 7200 x 10800, I typically send a
file approx 20 megs. (150 dpi) to the rip and end up with a real good looking
print. On the other side, using offset printing, I use full resolution (300
dpi) and the quality will always be there. The CLC (Canon) output will be
similar to the inkjet and you will have good results.
If you are resampling in Photoshop to achieve a larger file size/more
resolution, similar to that of the poster size we are talking about, you better
have a lot of ram for that operation also! In Photoshop I use a blur/sharpen
filter technique to resample to a greater resolution (usually a scan or a image
grabbed from a frame buffer), but try this technique for your large posters. Do
a test file to see the results, first you would change the image size -use the
'%' & 'keep proportion'-, and do a 125% enlargement (your file size will
double), then use the Gaussian Blur filer with a 1.0 pixel radius, then use the
Sharpen & Sharpen More filer to your liking.
This technique should do a real nice job of pixel smoothing and you can end up
with a larger file for your inkjet output. Good RIP software will do more than
just resampling, it will do a pixel interpolation (similar to what you would
achieve with the blur/sharpen technique but much more involved). Your best
results will still come from a full size render from 3DS!
–Mike