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Adding full color photos and illustrations to large vinyl banners will give your banner designs with more impact and a much more professional appearance. Putting a full color photograph on your vinyl banner is usually the easiest way to do this.

When you want to add a photo or illustration to a vinyl banner design, you should keep a few things in mind. For the image to look clear and crisp it really should be saved in the correct resolution. For most large display projects such as vinyl banners, display backdrops, window graphic, and popup displays, try to keep resolution at about 100 ppi (pixels per inch) at full size.

In other words if you have an image that is 300 ppi at 8" x 10",then this image can be blown up to roughly 24" x 30". That will give you a final resolution of 100 ppi. In many cases you can probably go as low as 50 ppi and still be quite satisfied with the output, because these projects are normally created for viewing from a distance of 10 feet or more away.

Second, you should almost always brighten up the colors of your graphics. You can usually do this by increasing the contrast. In Photoshop the most effective way to do this is by "pinching" the levels controls. Open the levels control window and pull the shadows (dark shades) control towards the middle (to the right). Then pull the control for the highlights to the left. This has the effect of brightening your light colors and darkening your shadows while eliminating some of the "mudiness" of the mid tones.

"Sharpening" your images will also make them look brighter. Punch up your images with a bit of sharpening and they will almost always appear crisper with greater impact. But don't go overboard.

Last but not least, you should work in CMYK mode rather than RGB. Vinyl banners are almost always printed on CMYK printing machines using solvent inks. If you input RGB images you are relying on your printer to convert them to CMYK. This is often not as reliable as converting them yourself before sending the images down to the printer. RGB can be somewhat misleading since it can display more colors than can be printed by CMYK.

There are colors you can see on a computer monitor that you simply cannot reproduce with CMYK inks especially not with solvent inks on a medium such as vinyl. You are best to know this before you get the printing done. If it is important to create a specific color and if time permits a proof can be produced on the actual vinyl banner material to give you a clear picture of how the finished product will look.

Another important point to realized is that the choice of ink will impact the quality of the job. It is usually advisable to use true solvent inks for outdoor projects because they are best for full color printing intended for use in harsh sunlight or other harsh weather conditions such as rain or snow.

Solvent inks resist fading due to UV exposure, and stand up to wind and rain much better. Non solvent inks will usuallyfade much more quickly in bright sunlight. Even for indoor projects it is often better to use solvent-based inks because they produce a much more durable final result. This is especially important for applications like trade show banners or event backdrops which will likely be rolled and unrolled many times, and be handled a lot.