Lithograph Work

[CraniumDesigns]

I have been commisioned to do some lithograph work. Check out www.craniumdesigns.com/litho.jpeg. They want me to take a cd of photos scanned at 300 dpi and create images similiar to this one to be printed as 8 X 10's and 11 X 14's. What would you charge to make an image that huge and do that kind of effect PER IMAGE? It will be very large in size and resolution so it will slow down my comp, even if it is a 1.33 ghz athlon, so what should I charge em? This is pretty excited too, knowing that a bunch of people might own something that I help make.

[Mark T.]

I get a connection refused on your link.

[cyberprince]

me too!

[CraniumDesigns]

http://www.craniumdesigns.com/litho.jpeg

TAKE THE PERIOD OFF!!!

[Mark T.]

I did and it still refused the connection. Anyway, the image looks great. I am sorry, I didn't have any advice for you, since I am not experienced in this business, I just wanted to point out the error when viewing the image.

[creole]

Cranium...I don't think there is any need for you to "shout".

As for your post, this would not be a hard job at all. It should not even slow your computer down noticeably.

A few things to keep in mind:

1) Since these will be printed on a printing press, you will need to have the images in CMYK mode instead of RGB mode.

2) You would be well served to talk to the company that will be printing the pieces as you can get valuable information from them. First question you should ask them is "What line-screen will you be printing at?". Line-screen (or lines per inch: lpi) designates the fineness of the final image. The higher the linbe screen, the sharper the image. I would wager that for this type of work a line screen of around 130-170 would be used.

The reason for asking about the line-screen is that you can save yourself a little time and adjust the resolution of the image to the line-screen. You simply make the resolution of the image you are working on 2 times the line-screen (dpi=2*lpi)

3) You also need to find out if you will have to provide the finished files in Quark Xpress or Pagemaker format. These are both page layout programs and are the files that are typically "sent to the printer" as opposed to a raw Photoshop file.

As for the files themselves, it's unlikely that they will be more than about 60 megs. The final file that is used whether in Quark or a straight TIFF or EPS will probably be no more than about 25 megs.

The image that you showed us is very simple and would take me no more than 2 hours (at the most) to create.

[CraniumDesigns]

The company I am doing it through wants it a 300 dpi, so that is what i will use. And you're saying I should save it as a tiff? I do not have quark express or pagemaker, although I'm sure I could get a copy of either.

[creole]

I'm not saying that you would HAVE to use Quark. I simply said that you should check with the company that will be printing the pieces to see what they prefer. Since this is just an image (with little text) they might take the raw Photoshop file or TIFF or EPS files.

As for the dpi, what the company says and what the piece needs are not necessarily the same thing. People always say "300dpi" like it's some magic number. In reality the majority of Print jobs are just fine with around 220dpi to 260dpi (which would result in smaller file sizes and faster processing time).

Good luck