best application for making posters and the likes?

shanegiven

Hey guys,

Just got a mac and was wondering what would be the best app for poster creation (cropping and adding stuff if you know what i mean). Basically i have to make up posters, card and banner design for a society and was wondering what to use or download to do such a thing? Basically a free and easy photoshop for basic stuff!

Any help appreciated!

Cheers!

Jev/N

Live Quartz is supposed to be a great free alternative to photoshop/illustrator but have never used it.

Also GIMP for the PC.

iamhunted

gimp for osx would probably do the job - http://www.gimp.org/macintosh/

nialler

The thing with pixel based programs like photoshop and GIMP is that they are resolution dependent ie to not get tatty print quality you have to do your posters at actual size and approximately 300dpi so an A2 poster will be a couple of hundred megs in size or more with a scratch disk about 3-4 times that, if you got a vector based (illustrator) program you could do it at 10% of size and it will scale to 1000% or more without any loss of quality.

akadesign

Employ a professional Graphic Designer http://www.creativeireland.com/directory/graphic_design/

shanegiven

I think if im looking for a free download hiring a professional probably isn't what im looking for....

Both gimp and live quartz seem to be exactly what i was looking for! Thanks guys!

iamhunted

nialler wrote: »

The thing with pixel based programs like photoshop and GIMP is that they are resolution dependent ie to not get tatty print quality you have to do your posters at actual size and approximately 300dpi so an A2 poster will be a couple of hundred megs in size or more with a scratch disk about 3-4 times that, if you got a vector based (illustrator) program you could do it at 10% of size and it will scale to 1000% or more without any loss of quality.

thats only for vector graphics though - the minute you add a photo or a full colour image to your poster, youre back to using pixel based imaging again - plus these days most machines can easily handle a photoshop image and scratch disc of that size. Also if you're printing to an ink jet large format, you dont need to be at 300 dpi anyway - normally 150-200

fbradyirl

Pages has some really cool poster templates also

thecommander

iamhunted wrote: »

thats only for vector graphics though - the minute you add a photo or a full colour image to your poster, youre back to using pixel based imaging again - plus these days most machines can easily handle a photoshop image and scratch disc of that size. Also if you're printing to an ink jet large format, you dont need to be at 300 dpi anyway - normally 150-200

If you're doing in InDesign it keep the vectors as vectors & the bitmaps as bitmaps. The bitmapped photos are only linked to the in the InDesign project and not actually saved within it, thus using less memory. Personally I'd use InDesign, but if you don't have the time/money to invest in it go with some of the options above.

iamhunted

Quark is much cheaper these days than it used to be - but its still expensive enough. Just a quick one one vectors - they're used mainly for scalibility, which is out the window if you have any form of pixelized images in the same poster.

thecommander

iamhunted wrote: »

Quark is much cheaper these days than it used to be - but its still expensive enough. Just a quick one one vectors - they're used mainly for scalibility, which is out the window if you have any form of pixelized images in the same poster.

A PDF can contain vector elements and bitmaped images. Vectors dont pixelise when you scale as a PDF.