Poster Design - quick question

raindog.promo

Hi,

I have to design a poster for college and was wondering:

If you had to design a poster and had a choice of using either Photoshop or Microsoft publisher, which would you use and why?

Cheers.

Citizen_Erased

I have had to do posters for my university course and have found that a combination of the two is what works best , making the individual graphics within photoshop and then arranging them and adding writing etc using Publisher/Powerpoint. Creating a complete poster within photoshop is not only very figity and tricky for the user but most systems wont be able to handle the large file sizes needed for making say an A3 poster.

So if possible , use a combination of both , photoshop to make the graphics and publisher to arrange , script and format the poster . And if you have to chose one programe only, chose publisher and save yourself the major headache that working solely with photoshop would be .

Hank_Scorpio

Sorry, but take MS Publisher and fling it out the window, it's the most horrendous program ever invented ever. It's not for layout and definitely not for designing A3 posters.

Use photoshop.

Use layers. Use text. Use Vector Shapes. Output as PDF, text remains text and isn't rasterised, vector shapes are not rasterised, and the rasters remain rasters.

The file size won't be huge when saving pdf, but remember to save as psd too that way you can alter the layers again.

FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DON'T TOUCH MS PUBLISHER.

Citizen_Erased

For someone who is clearly making their first ever poster for a college application MS publisher is the better choice for a number of reasons . The mains ones are that Photoshop is much much too much of a steep learning curve for the given situation , you need knowledge and experience to turn out good results with photoshop . Secondly , posters for school are informative and therefore need to contain lots of well arrange data , both text and images , and for aligning , resizing etc etc of text and images on the fly publisher is far superior to photoshop in its usability . An add on to this point is also that the end result is not meant to be something pretty , it is a factual report like another , so asides from arrangements and flow , comestics take a back seat.

I used to have your view on the program, Hank, until we were forced to make a poster using powerpoint and I have not looked back since.

Use publisher / powerpoint for school work

heggie

and when you try and get it printed? what do you suggest he do then as I know few printers who will use publisher

Citizen_Erased

they can save to pdf just like any other program.

Getting him to do this with photoshop is like lighting a cigerette with a flame thrower.

I am not by any means arguing that publisher is the better program but in this case it is the more suitable one.

Hank_Scorpio

Points taken, but if you can do it in Photoshop then do it in photoshop.

Being in the Industry for over 10 years with 5 years in a prepress department I am of the opinion that people shouldn't use Microsoft apps for any sort of layout or anything that has to be printed. I've seen my fair share of crap come through the system. That for me is a personal preference, perhaps I was a bit hasty by saying DON'T USE PUBLISHER.

But again, if you can use Photoshop adequately then do it in Photoshop and save as PDF, keeping the layered PSD file.

minikin

for the love of god and his angelic army of prepress operators...

DO NOT USE ANY MICROSLOP PROGRAMMES FOR ANYTHING... EVER

suggesting someone use powerpoint for anything other than putting your fellow business execs into a light doze is akin to suggesting someone cross the atlantic in a kettle

as for laying print artwork out in photoshop... it's the least worst option in this case... ordinarily if you have access to a real layout package or even illustrator you would NEVER use potatoshop

Citizen_Erased

I have an A* that begs to differ from making a college poster from powerpoint (which i recall is the subject of the post) ... does that mean I am capable of transversing a large body of water with only the average tea and coffee making facilities of a standard 3-star hotel ?

But enough of this thread before it gets locked , these are called opinions, not facts. The advantages of these two programs over each other have been laid out above , if you have nothing to add but radical fanboyism and software slander , do not post.

heggie

minikin's bang on. shame on your college if that's the case. a 72 dpi a3 poster huh

Citizen_Erased

Yes because strangely enough as stated above when you have 140 fresher engineering students and need them to out put large information based posters the highly complex photo refining tool Adobe Photoshop (which on a side note we know is a far more widely distributed tool than publisher of course) is some what to steep of a learning curve . Why that is I dont know , i mean if we can all do with and we've only been using the program for at the very minimum 5 years each why cant leaving cert students who have learned nothing of computers so far in their students careers ? I mean the university really should devote hours and hours and tonnes of extra resources to educating them in the use of photoshop just because a few anal professional graphic designers cant bare the thought of something being printed at 72 dpi , it all makes sense now. The skills necessary for all my classmates to make their posters for the project in powerpoint were all taught in a single 50 min lecture , do you think you can do that with Photoshop ?

Since Heggie clearly violated my warning about malicious replies this thread is now closed, but I nearly wish I could leave it open to see what would of course be your most logical retort to the above argument. If you have a problem with how my university runs its masters engineering degrees , I suggest you write them an informative letter on why they should train their engineers to employ their time making posters for the project rather than the preforming the project itself , I'm positive they will definitly consider your proposals in an mannerly and adult fashion , but this is not the place for your own personal vendettas. The behaviour you have exhibited on this thread has been nothing but a "holier than thou" attitude and neither you nor minikin made any attempt to consider the situation of the OP and offer adjusted advice on that predicament , instead just diving straight in with your self induced illusion of "1337"ness and that all things should be up to your better than god standard.