How do i deal with a very large print map?

[The_Great_Lestrade]

Yo

Im going to start producing maps of various kinds for the UK megagamers


https://www.facebook.com/groups/1090049874342797/

The maps are going to be printed rather large (enough to fill a few tables);




So my question is how do i design maps that will print well at that size with out pixelating too much. My computer (8gb ram, intel I5 4x3ghz, Geforce 680) compains a bit when i produce maps at A3 size at high res. If i try to make a map the size of 3 large tables it will capitulate.

Any ideas?

Are there methods for keeping the working layers memory light and easy to work with? Is there a reasonable resolution for large scale printing? Should i design the map at A3 or A2 then blow it up to print?

[Chick]

You need to have at least 300 dpi to print without pixels being visible. To print a 48" map (the largest that can typically be printed on your local shop's printer), you would need to have 14,400 pixels in that dimension. If you develop the map at 14000 pixels square at 300 pixels/inch, you could do this.

That will be an extremely large file, in Photoshop, it would probably require their oversized file type (for larger than 2 GB). You can work hard to keep the file size down by combining layers whenever possible.

A better plan is probably to do the map in sections at a more reasonable size, still using 300 ppi, and then glue them together, or have the files combined and printed at some shop that can handle that size printing.

[Gamerprinter]

You need to have at least 300 dpi to print without pixels being visible. To print a 48" map (the largest that can typically be printed on your local shop's printer), you would need to have 14,400 pixels in that dimension. If you develop the map at 14000 pixels square at 300 pixels/inch, you could do this.

That's not necessarily true. As long as you don't have any small fonts (smaller than 10 point size), nor extremely fine details, a 200 ppi map will print fine without pixels showing, though I generally set all intended-for-print maps at 300 ppi myself. I use to print maps professionally for gamers and publishers (hence my forum name), so I expertly know.

I have access to a large format scanner, however, what you need to consider is that the standard large format scanner can only handle up to 36 inches in width, by any reasonable length (I've scanned maps that were 36 inches x 96 inches (8 feet long) at up to 300 dpi resolution. These scanners can scan full color images as well, but of course you'll dealing with a huge file size measured in hundreds of MB or more in size each one. You'll need to a local digital print shop that has that capability. Not all have access to large format scanners.

[johnvanvliet]

i routinely work with imaging data sets BIGGER than 12 Gig
like 256 pixels per degree planet maps .That is a image that is 92,160 x 46,080 px and a ONE layer 32 bit floating point image is 16 gig



i use a program that was DESIGNED from the ground up to work on these size MULTI layer images

initially 100 layer spectrograph HI !!! resolution images of Paintings

vips and the front end GUI Nip2
Wikipedia now uses the vips image lib
http://www.vips.ecs.soton.ac.uk/index.php?title=VIPS
a blog
http://libvips.blogspot.com/

[The_Great_Lestrade]

useful stuff, i work in gimp. The maps (if you look carefully in the image above) will be printed on several A3 or A2 sheets and then assembled, so i might do A3 300 or 200 dpi and then assemble the whole.

[johnvanvliet]

the issue with Gimp,PhotoShop and even ImageMagick is the WHOLE image has to be read into RAM FIRST

if you have only 8 gig ram and Windows7 or 8 are already using 2 gig of that 8 just to show the desktop

so a 8 gig image will already be using 2 gig of SWAP space on the hard drive

thus making doing anything DEAD SLOW

nip2/vips reads ONLY a small subsection of the image into ram to display it
a 1920x1080 screen showing a resize of a 92000 x 46000 image will only use up a few hundred meg of ram to show the image on the screen

that is why i use it on BIG images

[The_Great_Lestrade]

i see your arguement, however does nip2vips have the functionality of GIMP? i need to design ye olde atlas style maps, with gimp the systems are there to do that, and i have some familiarity with them.

might have to buy a 16gb ram stick

[Gamerprinter]

Well I use vector software for most of my maps, so even maps that measure 36 x 96 inches of multiple layers of graphics, and all appearing as if created in an image editor, hardly ever passes 500 MB in size. The same graphic as a PSD, might be multiple GB in size putting serious processing efforts on computers that they are made. In vector, pixels are meaningless until you export the file to image format, which is the only time pixels show their face in my work. Of course all maps I post are in JPG format, but they were all created in Xara vector format, which is much less a memory hog.

[The_Great_Lestrade]

I do have inkscape installed, i might try using that. I have 3 maps currently to produce, and a few more to follow time permitting. I will experiment with the simpler projects.