# File size for billboard too large.



## mengelman (Apr 28, 2014)

I shot a photo of an outdoor patio for a restaurant that wants to make a billboard from it. The lady at the billboard company doesnt seem to care what format it is in but she said 300x300 dpi and about 1 meg file size. I can do the 300x300 but the filesize in jpeg is 13 meg. does anyone have any experience with this? I am guessing they email it somewhere else to have the billboard print made and maybe this is the reason for the file size limit.


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## clee01l (Apr 29, 2014)

Welcome to the forum. The company that you are dealing with does not know what they need. In the first case 300 dpi is a meaningless term. Pixels in a file have no dimensions. And 300X300 dpi says that the billboard company is going to print a 1 inch X 1 inch square billboard at 300 dpi.  I don't think that is what you want.  What you need is the final dimensions of the result printed from your image. If you supply that and the dimensions in pixels of your final image to us, we can calculate the dpi that you will have and give some estimate of the quality of the result On a typical printer, 300dpi is the optimum. You can print as small as 180dpi and get a print of acceptable quality. Printing a billboard size image usually implies a greater viewing distance and an image with a lower resolution can work. Also the printing company can upsize the image and use interpolation to prevent jagged pixel edges. 

Now once you determine the final pixel dimensions of your file, you can vary the JPEG quality some to get a smaller file size.  The result still may be larger than 1Mb.


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## mengelman (Apr 29, 2014)

Thanks for the info Cletus but I emailed her at Lamar advertising and she replied "did you see my previous email? 300x300 dpi and about 1 meg" So I will not get any help from her.


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## Hal P Anderson (Apr 29, 2014)

Billboard image sizes are evidently unexpectedly small. 

I found a site where they want an image 702 x 200 pixels for a 14 x 48 feet digital billboard. Is yours digital?

For a non-digital billboard, they want the image to be scaled at 1/4 inch per foot at 300 or more ppi. That one is likely to be bigger than your 1 MB limit.


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## Replytoken (Apr 29, 2014)

Perhaps the PDF files at the bottom of this page might be of some assistance? http://www.lamar.com/Products/Bulletins

--Ken


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## LouieSherwin (Apr 30, 2014)

Commercial printers live in a different world. 15 years ago all digital submissions were requested by file size 15MB, 32MB etc.. I think it was a shorthand based on 8 bit color as as a way to get a sufficiently detailed image for the intended use. Your contact does not seem to understand digital imaging terms. Perhaps you can ask to speak to the layout editor unless of course that is who you are already talking to. 

I would just send them a full resolution 8 bit tiff. You can set the internal resolution to 300 just to make sure they don't complain. However, Cletus is correct that the resolution of a digital image is meaningless. They can do all the resizing magic that they need.  

-louie


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## Replytoken (Apr 30, 2014)

FWIW, the following is copied from their instructions for files to be used for a 10'x30' bulletin board:
SCALE / RESOLUTION / LIVE & TRIM AREAS
Built at 9ppi @ 300 document resolution
Live area document size: 3.60” x 10.80”
Overall document size: 3.96” x 11.16”

--Ken


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## mengelman (Apr 30, 2014)

Thanks for all the replies. I think the problem was getting the file down to something that could be emaile. After I called her out on being a bit "prickly" she got much nicer. She linked me to a site that handles large files and I got them to her. Now all is well.

Thanks guys


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## Linwood Ferguson (May 1, 2014)

As Hal mentioned, digital billboards are often VERY low resolution.  Very.  Since each dot needs to be a separate set of bright LED's.  And often they are very odd sizes as well, when they are on other media (e.g. I chatted with a ballpark media guy, and I forget the dimensions but it was something like 400 x 50, really wide and thin and low res).  They often are looking for photos without a lot of fine detail (or at least detail that is necessary), almost cartoon art.  

Varies all over the place of course. 

But the whole "dpi" thing is maddening.  I've had that conversation with other photographers.  One in particular I have it with almost every time we talk, wanting to know how he sets that in the camera, so he doesn't have to use lightroom to set it, and he just doesn't like the answer "it's nothing you need to SET".


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## mengelman (May 1, 2014)

Thanks Linwood. It is not a digital billboard. I think she was being bitchy and did not want to help. 
I was a film photographer in another life and worked in a professional color lab. We dodged and burned with our hands not a mouse. I  havent been in digital that long. I am amazed at what we can do now and challenged by the technical side. Thanks for your help.


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