I’m working on a poster for a local event. It has a photograph in the background. The poster itself is designed to be 11×17, which at 300dpi is about 3300×5100.
Now the photo in the background does not have to be completely crisp, since it is behind the text and can be a little blurry.
I’m just looking at istockphoto and wondering what size image to buy. I don’t think I need the full size, but I have no idea which I can get away with.
Answer
If you’ll be going to a digital print shop to make the posters (which would be usual for a small run for a local event), you’ll be fine at 150 ppi, and for a background image you probably wouldn’t be in trouble at 100 ppi, particularly since it likely won’t contain a lot of high-frequency detail that would conflict with your text.
An 11×17 poster is mostly going to be viewed from a lot more than 10 inches away, so that also reduces the resolution requirement.
Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Damon , Answer Author : Alan Gilbertson