Keri,
Best advice I can give you is to talk to your printer first. See what he needs and can work with.
Ideally, it’s important to note that most posters and large signs are meant to be viewed at a distance, so you can get away with lower resolution images. You can likely design at 50% or 25% final size (at 300 ppi) and still give your service provider enough data to work with. Billboards, for example, would be absolutely HUGE files if designed at 100%. When I design them, I design them at a 1:12 ratio (1 inch equals 1 foot) at 300 ppi. The billboard company will output the file at it’s proper dimensions and the image will end up only being 15-25 ppi, but the reader will never be able to tell as the sign will be viewed from so far away.
But… if you’re having trouble with 100MB files you may want to consider bumping up your machine specs by adding more RAM or faster CPU. I’m currently working on posters that are 1.2 GB in size without too much difficulty (3 GHz P4, 2 GB RAM, 800MHz FSB). My upgrade (from an AMD 1.2 GHz processor and 1GB RAM) only cost me $600 for the new processor, Mobo and RAM.
Hope this helps.
Keri,
"Every time I add an element the file gets larger."
If by that you are referring to adding a layer, then yes, that can significantly increase the size of your file depending upon the layer content. For example, duplicating the image content layer may well double the size of a file whereas adding a layer adjustment may not impact the size so much.
So, if the size of the file is growing unwieldy, then you might consider merging layers where you’ve got things worked out as you want and don’t have any concern for maintaining individual editablity of various elements in your image. Keep future needs in mind as well.
BLUDVLZ,
I don’t recall if you’re runnning with PSCS or not, but if you are then I’m curious whether you’re running with dual-channel RAM or not? This regards issues I’ve seen mentioned in other threads about PSCS not effectively using RAM that exceeds 1GB in a dual-channel configuration. Have you seen any problems related to that? Thanks.
Regards,
Daryl
Daryl,
Yes, I’m running CS and dual channel. No, I haven’t run into anything that would indicate any problems with RAM utilization. Overall, things are running pretty smoothly.
Blu
BLUDVLZ,
Still trying to narrow down the cause of my 2GB DC DDR SDRAM problem – if it’s not too much trouble, could you tell me what mobo and brand of RAM you are using, and what do you have your RAM allocation set to in PS? Do you work with files around 150MB in size, and if so, have you tried any of the heavy-duty filters such as Distort>Diffuse Glow?
Thanks,
Fred.
It’s a Shuttle mobo, can’t remember the brand of RAM. I think it was Kreton? Sound right? I’d have to crack the case to let you know more, and I’m up against a tight deadline right now.
As to the file size question, 150MB is a bit on the small side of what I typically work with for most projects, but I do run the gamut on filter usage and put the machine through its paces.
Thanks Bludvlz, I’m beginning to smell an Asus/Intel i865 rat here – there seems to be an over-representation of one and/or the other amongst those of us having problems.
And I thought that selecting big-brand (expensive!) componentry was doing myself a favour. Wrong again.
Looks like I’m stuck with it now, though I’m a bit bewildered that if it is a hardware thing, Adobe apparently didn’t test PS on such widely used componentry.
Fred.
