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Barb Macdonald
04-13-2009, 10:37 AM
Hey all! Apologies if this is a usual silly question from me.

I have a customer needing some digital prints of "In Case Of Fire" Floor Plans.
His artist has supplied me with a BMP, high res, which still loses it's "sharp" when printed. So he sent a PDF, same thing.
I've told them we'd need better artwork, i.e. an eps vector file. Now they think I don't want to do it. I've said again, wysiwyg, otherwise I have to up-charge for art modification.
Why do they expect that I'll be able to improve it?
The guy spent hours obviously, maybe in CAD.
Anyway, I will attempt to attach the art, in PDF format. The BMP, printed, looks the same.
Am I missing something, besides a brain?

Happy Easter Monday!

Gary Hair
04-13-2009, 10:47 AM
I imported the PDF into Corel and it's just a bitmap inside a pdf, no difference than importing in a bitmap directly.

If they drew it in a cad program have them send you a .dwg file, you can import that into Corel and it will be in vector format.

Gary

Joe Pelonio
04-13-2009, 12:31 PM
Anything printed large has to be done in vector file or if bitmap, at least 150 dpi in actual size. Often customers send something that's 300 dpi bitmap 8.5x11 and expect you to print it 18"x24" but it's all pixelated. As Gary said, they have to either send a good file or pay you to create it.

Changing a bitmap to PDF doesn't improve it. Their dwg or dxf might import a lot more cleanly to your program. When they are stubborn I send them a sample of what it looks like printed that size, just from the regular inkjet then scanned, so they can see how bad it looks, and that usually motivates them.

Doug Griffith
04-13-2009, 12:54 PM
Vector is obviously best but if they have to go bitmap have them rasterize a high resolution(lets say 600 DPI) anti-aliased grayscale tiff. Lines and type will come out better because they will be interpolated and won't have to jump pixels. If you look at the wall thickness variation, you'll see what I'm talking about. I'm sure in the original drawing, all walls were the same.

Cheers,
Doug

Jerry Hay
04-13-2009, 5:31 PM
Take a look at this and see if it is close.
I ran it through Corel Draw and traced it to vectors
I saved it in version 10
I hope it helps

Jerry Hay
04-13-2009, 7:27 PM
I don't know what happened I thought I attached it.
Here it is now.

Mike Null
04-13-2009, 7:46 PM
Had a similar thing happen when a cust. supplier me with artwork he had done. I explained to him that it wasn't usable and he sent it in more unusable formats. I told him that it would be $100 to re-draw his work for engraving. he said go ahead. Now I've been waiting two weeks for him to pick up his prototypes.

David Fairfield
04-13-2009, 9:10 PM
Heh, yeah there's always a guy who can't manage a simple thing like send an attachment, and of course he thinks the problem is on your end. 90% of the nonsense in this business is caused by a certain 10% of customers who just can't do simple things in a normal way. The same sorts of people are responsible for the puddles you usually see underneath public urnials! They can't even pee straight.

I just tell them I can't use the file as-is, there's a big charge to redraw and hope they just go away. Thank goodness they usually do! If they can't even get past step 1 without causing a headache, chances are they aren't gonna get any better.

Dave

James Jaragosky
04-14-2009, 12:18 AM
Heh, yeah there's always a guy who can't manage a simple thing like send an attachment, and of course he thinks the problem is on your end. 90% of the nonsense in this business is caused by a certain 10% of customers who just can't do simple things in a normal way. The same sorts of people are responsible for the puddles you usually see underneath public urnials! They can't even pee straight.

I just tell them I can't use the file as-is, there's a big charge to redraw and hope they just go away. Thank goodness they usually do! If they can't even get past step 1 without causing a headache, chances are they aren't gonna get any better.

Dave
I use to do home remolding; occasionally I would get a bad vibe from a from a potential customer. they usually were a major PITA right from the start. So I would triple my estimate in the hopes that they would go away.
Unfortunately some of them still excepted the estimate; and it was rarely worth the money even at the inflated pricing.

Another company probably created the original art work and retained the cad file. now they are shopping the pdf version to you.

I always keep the vector file and give out a pdf; unless the customer pays for the art work. Otherwise they will use your hard work to undercut your pricing.

Bill Cunningham
04-14-2009, 9:24 PM
I use to do home remolding; occasionally I would get a bad vibe from a from a potential customer. they usually were a major PITA right from the start. So I would triple my estimate in the hopes that they would go away.
Unfortunately some of them still excepted the estimate; and it was rarely worth the money even at the inflated pricing.

Another company probably created the original art work and retained the cad file. now they are shopping the pdf version to you.

I always keep the vector file and give out a pdf; unless the customer pays for the art work. Otherwise they will use your hard work to undercut your pricing.

Ahhh but if you don't convert the work to a low res bitmap 'before' publishing to a .pdf, they 'have' your vector artwork..

Doug Griffith
04-14-2009, 10:35 PM
Ahhh but if you don't convert the work to a low res bitmap 'before' publishing to a .pdf, they 'have' your vector artwork..

Good point. Even PDFs saved with editing disabled can be opened in Illustrator. Security needs to be enabled in order to lock the file and prevent images from being harvested.

Roy Nicholson
04-15-2009, 6:49 AM
There's software readuly available that will remove the security from .pdf files.

I believe the software is Passware.

Regards

Roy N.

Dan Hintz
04-15-2009, 8:49 AM
Security means nothing on PDFs... if they don't care about stealing your work and handing it to someone else, do you really think they care much about downloading a piece of software that will defeat the security? Even our government and major companies have been hosed by the so-called security features of PDF... you can black out portions of files before sending them to someone, but with a few proper keystrokes you can see what's under the black... not very secure.

Doug Griffith
04-15-2009, 9:54 AM
Hey Dan,
Every now and then I have to sign NDAs to get behind closed doors. Today it is for LEDtronics. Now I get to see what your world is all about.

Cheers,
Doug

Dan Hintz
04-15-2009, 10:47 AM
Hey Dan,
Every now and then I have to sign NDAs to get behind closed doors. Today it is for LEDtronics. Now I get to see what your world is all about.
Oooooh, I'm jealous... for all of my work with LEDs and the like, I've only had one opportunity to work with a company that designed major products around them (and they were paying WAY below my pay scale, so I politely declined). To get to walk the floor of one of the big boys would be a nice treat :)

Seriously, though... if you need anyone to collaborate with, someone who is comfortable with the laser world and knows the LED world like the back of his hand, holler my direction!