Making Posters?

[izwar]

Hello,

i am having trouble making some posters. I want to make them 12 inches by 24 inches. What is the basic process? in photoshop i create a new file with those exact dimensions and then i drag a photo in and i increase it to fill the area but as you may imagine the quality becomes terrible, so i dont know how people go about making posters. ANy help?

[Varelse]

Your photo has to be of the proper dimensions/resolution to print well in a poster size. Small photos will always get blurred when scaled up.
Alternatively you can design your poster in Illustrator, with tracing your photos into vector format.

[izwar]

so i just have to find a high quality image that will retain its quality when scaled?

[Varelse]

This is one option

[Red Engine]

If the final product (in this case, the poster) is destined for print you'll need to start a new Photoshop file or convert the current working file to 300 dpi/ppi to retain good quality. You can get away with 150 dpi/ppi but 300 is better; 600 better still, but 600 is not required and can make your file quite large and unmanageable.

If the poster is destined for online viewing, 72 dpi/ppi is all that's required. In case you don't know dpi stands for Dots Per Inch and is how files are measured by printers; ppi stands for Pixels Per Inch and is how files are measured on screen.

And as the previous poster confirmed, you'll need an image which fits the size you're working toward. A good rule of thumb is this - in the world of pixels, it's better to reduce than to enlarge. If you need to enlarge you image to get the size you need chances are it's going to look bad.

[izwar]

thank you for the help, were in photoshop can i increase the DPI since its for print.

[Red Engine]

You can change the image size and the canvas size under the image menu; image size will allow you to change the dpi for the working document; canvas size will allow you to shrink or enlarge your current working canvas without changing the dpi. Also, if you're working toward print you may need to change your document color settings to CMYK.