Why Size Does Matter With Posters?

A Miss Enid Loopner from Baltimore, Maryland, writes in and asks:

Q: When you showed me a proof of the jpg I emailed you for my poster, it looked fuzzy and dotty, why did that happen?

A: This is why we always show hard copy proofs when possible here at Curry Printing; just so you can see how the file you provided us will end up looking when we print it for you!

Have you ever heard the expression GIGO? It means “garbage in, garbage out.” In effect, if we are provided with a low resolution image or file for outputting, the resulting output is usually only as good as what we are given. Now, we can certainly work some Curry Printing magic and see what tricks we have up our sleeves to improve what you give us. However, if you want a poster of a file you give to us that is 2 square inches and 15 dpi, the resulting image will definitely look fuzzy and grainy.

Here’s a good rule of thumb to use for providing images for enlarging to poster size. We ideally would prefer an image that is 300 dpi in order to give you the best, most crisp-looking output. If you aren’t sure where to see the size of your file, just give us a call and we’ll walk you through it.

Although they say the best things in life come in small packages, the best posters come from large files!

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