It's not that big. 3 feet wide is 36 inches, which is a largish poster print, but not outside the realm of what many people here produce. If I recall correctly, my Randland map ultimately printed at 24" x 36". It was a little unwieldy to get a PNG that size for Gamerprinter, but it was definitely doable. The hardest part was persuading Illustrator to export at that size.
Width and height are completely your call, but make sure your printing service can handle the size you've selected.
A lot of Photoshop's functions are unavailable in CMYK mode, but you should be aware that the gamut for CMYK is significantly smaller than that of RGB. It's up to you whether the added flexibility is worth the probability that your colors will not print correctly. You should make frequent use of the gamut warning feature.
Unless you have a need for a higher bit-depth, stick to 8-bit. If you find out you need the extra precision from 16-bit or float, you can always convert later on, but you're going to have to be in 8-bit for Kinko's to print it, anyway, so you might as well start there to save yourself hassles.
DPI is the sticky wicket. It's going to depend on your eventual viewing circumstances. 300 is good for anything that will be viewed at about arm's length. Most poster prints do not get seen that closely, though, so you can frequently go down to 200, or even all the way to 150, depending on the material. Obviously, the finer your details and the smaller your type, the higher the resolution you'll want. If you're planning on laying the map out on the table for a roleplaying group to reference, then stick to 300. If it's going to hang on the wall in your home, I'd say 200. If it's going into a fine art gallery (unlikely if you're printing at Kinko's!), then 600, and that would be a gigantic file.
As a point of reference, a 36" by 24" image at 300 dpi is 10,800 x 7200 pixels, which is 77.7 megapixels in area. With 24 channels of noise, the Photoshop file will be 5.3 GB, which requires the Large Document Format (PSB).
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Originally Posted by Midgardsormr
