Somewhat urgent help needed...poster images

I have never done a poster before and got asked kinda last minute to put something together for a banquet. Sizing is only 12x18. Well, my wife picked up the print today and tried to describe the problem to me. She said it looked "blurry", well not blurry but "digitally". I have not seen the print so that's all I can tell ya.

What I did to create the print was simply create a background layer and pull images onto it. I obviously had to greatly manipulate the size of the images on the background to make them all fit. Did I do something wrong there or do I need to somehow resample the entire print to get it looking right? The file info shows the overall image pixel dimension to be x:3600 y:5400 and resolution at 300 for both.

I know the poster is not much to be proud of but like I mentioned, I have never done one and I had no advance notice at all so I just threw something together best I knew. Also, not all pics are mine but you gotta work with what you got. Can anyone help me on how to simply improve the print quality of the overall image or help with what might be causing what my wife described and how I fix it? I can email the .PSD or original to you if you think it would help.

Thanks very much, I have to have it done tonight so I sincerely appreciate any feedback.

Here's a large sample, as mentioned, the original is 3600x5400 and obviously too big for POTN.

Did your wife stop at the tavern before she picked up the print?

Just kidding, Did she say the whole thing looked blurry or was it the individual pics of the players?

Also; did you upload it to the printers web site? Any chance there was a break down in resolution at the upload stage?

tomd wrote in post #9025053
Did your wife stop at the tavern before she picked up the print?

Just kidding, Did she say the whole thing looked blurry or was it the individual pics of the players?

Also; did you upload it to the printers web site? Any chance there was a break down in resolution at the upload stage?

I won't rule out the tavern b/c when I look at this at 100%, it looks clean with the exception of the low res logos. I did upload it to the printer which gives me an idea. We have a printer downstairs. I could burn it to disc and have him run it off as well. Any thoughts before I do that?

Was the "BAY" shield a web image? They don't enlarge well to 3600x5400.

Rebuild as a vector graphic, or at least crop out the bitmapped text and replace with cleaner text in a matching font.

Also, FWIW, I'd also make all of the names the same font size... as small as the longest name (Brandon). And I'd Align... Middle... Center on each row of names and the pictures.

clarence wrote in post #9025123
Was the "BAY" shield a web image? They don't enlarge well to 3600x5400.

Rebuild as a vector graphic, or at least crop out the bitmapped text and replace with cleaner text in a matching font.

It was a web image. I can definitely do the crop/replace on the wording. She wasn't clear on it but it sounded like the imges might be that way too. Each image was originally 5-9mp and like I mentioned, I just opened them, dragged onto the background and then dragged the edges to make them fit. Any thoughts on that?

Oh yeah, and thanks to you and Tom for such quick responses.

clarence wrote in post #9025138
Also, FWIW, I'd also make all of the names the same font size... as small as the longest name (Brandon). And I'd Align... Middle... Center on each row of names and the pictures.

you're absolutely right.

is this
http://www.bayboyssocc​er.com/images/band_gif​2.gif
the logo you used?
(from their web site) If so, it is only 7.4 kb gif file, so it probably won't print as nicely as you would like.

Be sure to resize and match the DPI of files your adding in to the background before you add them, I find that pulling 150 dpi images into a 300 dpi background can cause iassues, especially if you then use transform to get them to the proportions you want.

I'd recommend using the web logo as a guide and "trace" over it in Photoshop creating a new vector-based (or at least high-res) version. You could trace the shield with the pen tool and use that to create a new layer ... for the shield layer you can use blending options like gradient fill, emboss and drop shadows to create a more 3 dimensional look. Repeat for the ribbon and then use Text layers to replace the text. Looks like you already have a hi-res (or vector) version of the rocket.

300dpi should be fine.
When you brought in each photo, you always had to reduce the size of the photos to fit .. correct?
Enlarging a photo to fit doesn't always work out well, but reducing the size of the photo should be fine.

How did you give the printer the file?
On disc, FTP? email. (my guess is that this file should be way too big for email)

One thing to be careful with is gradients. Smooth gradients often end up looking "banded" ("digital"?) when enlarged. For my own posters, I typically try to use an enlarged action or other photo related to the group. Colorize to a single color tone, and fade the image so that it just becomes .... well ... background. The breakup and varience of a photo tend to hold up much better when enlarged than a computed gradient.

I agree with the previous member that it would be good to use a uniform font size for all the names. Careful use of stroke and drop-shadow on your text layers will help them read more clearly over the background. (The dark lettering is getting lost in the darker areas of your gradient)

PS: it might also help if you setup guidelines before adding and positioning your photos. They look like they're not all aligned or sized teh same.

Thanks again all. I went back over the logo and got it looking much better by tracing the shiled and cloning the letters then replacing them. That made it much cleaner. There are a hundred things I'd do differently if I had some time and had the benefit of experience. I originally sent the file over the web to the printer and I wouldn't be shocked if that caused some issues. I'm not so concerned if the logo isn't spot on as much as I want the pics to look okay. FWIW, they were all shot RAW then saved as 300dpi jpegs. I had the guy downstairs (photo lab) run me a 4x6 sample and it looked fine. I gave him a disc rather than sending it in on the web. He's running a 12x18 right now which is what I need. Hopefully it will be fine. I'll do this again next year but will have a much better idea of what to do and will have some time on my side too.

I'll post back after I get the larger print back and let you know how it looks. In the meantime, any additional advice is always welcome. Thanks so much to those that posted already.

Got the 12x18 and its money. Not sure why there was an issue on the one my wife picked up but the one I am holding is fine. Again, thanks so much for the advice and quick responses. Next time, it'll be better for sure!

wife looks at poster sees blurry....you look at poster it looks great = wife spends too much time at tavern.

Just kidding, glad it worked out for you.

tomd wrote in post #9025925
wife looks at poster sees blurry....you look at poster it looks great = wife spends too much time at tavern.

Just kidding, glad it worked out for you.

lol! Tom, your theory is gaining momentum by the minute!

Juli and I had a great time at the tavern today Scott. BTW, she paid for all the drinks too.