need to scale up a PDF... Help!

[eyeon]

I have a pretty serious problem...

I designed a banner that we are getting printed at a print shop run by a bunch of really nice Mongolians (no joke) who are great guys, but very difficult to communicate with. Basically, my banner needs to be 20 feet wide by 2 feet tall. Illustrator does not allow one to make documents that large, and so I currently have it designed at exactly half size. The trouble is, these guys are insisting that I send the file to them FULL SIZE, so they can just print it straight off, and I cannot for the life of me figure out how to scale up this banner to the proper size and save that as a PDF or EPS or whatever. I have CS2, and have looked quite thoroughly through Acrobat Help and cannot find any solution.

Any insight is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

 

[ATD]

Don't know how to help you. I have done a lot of outdoor, upwards to 110 feet and it's never full sized. It's always been a scaled like you are doing. Maybe they mean full resolution?

 

[eyeon]

Hmmmm thanks for the reply. I've been on and off the phone with them many times today, and besically we concluded that they would "talk to the person who is printing it" and see what they can do. Apparently they are actually printing this in Mongolia through family members who are traveling back to the states, and hand-delivering it to us here in the US in a week or two! Im curious to see how this turns out...

 

[ATD]

Let us know how this comes out. I would bet it's scaled like you are doing.


BTW I have done full sized docs out of Photoshop but I'm assuming this is vector artwork. Sometimes I have been asked to put everything in PS. Not a great way to do vector artwork but ...

 

[dogbone]

You could import it into a full size psd document at 150ppi, by using the place command and scale it up before rasterising. It will be about 400 Mb. Give them that file and the illy vector pdf that they can scale up and let them choose. My bet is that they will quickly learn to scale up.

 

[heehee]

I've done a banner 64 feet wide and it's scaled up. Maybe you need to find another printer.

 

[Mookamoo]

Similar situation - Printer could only print a PDF of a banner as the same size which I have never come across before.

We eventually solved it by finding out he could print Quark docs in pro and was able to scale it up from there.

Aske if it has to be a PDF and if they can scale from a different app?

 

[zero2dash]

Try this
-PDF the file as is (@ 50% size)
-Open PDF, change page setup to your desired size
-Print PDF to Adobe PDF printer (just make sure it doesn't downsample it or anything) allow it to scale to paper size
-You should end up with a PDF enlarged to size you need

If that doesn't work you can scale it up with the Acrobat plugin Quite Imposing Plus; I do it all the time with QIP using the step and repeat function.

 

[eyeon]

Try this
-PDF the file as is (@ 50% size)
-Open PDF, change page setup to your desired size
-Print PDF to Adobe PDF printer (just make sure it doesn't downsample it or anything) allow it to scale to paper size
-You should end up with a PDF enlarged to size you need

If that doesn't work you can scale it up with the Acrobat plugin Quite Imposing Plus; I do it all the time with QIP using the step and repeat function.

This is a great help -- I will certainly look into this for future projects... as for now, I sent the file to the Mongolians as is, with very specific instructions about what I wanted -- they said that they thought it was possible, and we left it at that. I suppose I will not know if it worked until I see the finished product! Hope it works...

Thanks for all the responses.