Large Montage for the British transport museum

[hugh_hill]

I have just finished a very good commission and have just been asked

to do another straight away, the problem is I have never tried to do

a collage on such a scale, (above A+0 and AA+0) can it be produced in

Photoshop then passed on to the printers/framers for finishing.

Can anyone recommend what is the best choice for mounting a permanent

fixture of this size?

My system is a P4 2.8Ghz, 1Gb DDR ram (800Mhz fsb) 600Gb in storage

and using Photoshop CS2 as primary editing software.

I will be using quite a few images between 2Mb � 50Mb for this

commission.

 

Any advice on this would be really helpful.

 

 

Thanks

 

Hugh

[jtdnyc]

Hugh, I'm sorry to say that I have no idea of the answer to your question...but, to make it easier for me (and others who are similarly ignorant) to follow the discussion, could you express the image size you're talking about in traditional English or metric measure? A+0/AA+0 means nothing to me.

 

Thanks. Incidentally, I have along admired your work.

[mr._smith]

Jonathan,

 

You need to brush up on your english. What Hugh is talking about are standard ISO sizes.

 

http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/scales/papersizes.html

[ian_scholey]

Not just english, its pretty much the rest of the world appart from the US.

 

Ian

 

http://profiles.colourperfect.co.uk

[steve_swinehart]

You don't say what resolution you want to work at = file size. Photoshop CS will work with the image size you describe even at 360 ppi. But, I think your machine is marginal for work of this size.

 

Photoshop will use 3 - 5x the amount of memory space (either RAM or scratch disk or combination of both) as the image size. It's really easy to get up to multi-gigabytes in image size if you're adding 360 ppi images.

 

PS will only address 2Gb of RAM at this time, but if you have a 3-4Gb RAM in the machine, when all of the overhead tasks and program load, you still have 2Gb free. If you have a second drive available for the scratch disk that is not the program drive PS runs better.

 

I'm currently working on a project that has a 200 Mb background onto which I'm putting 56 individual images. My final size is 24 x 32 inches (sorry don't do metric - it's roll paper).

 

With a test run, I put in 1/2 the images and things became ponderous. Every time you add an image, PS creates another layer. I merged the layers, and that seemed to speed the response time back up.

 

I tried working at 16 bits and the file size just became way too huge to manipulate easily.

 

So, I did all my individual image manipulations at 16 bits, then down sized to 8 bits for the final assembly. When you'e working at the size you've described, you need some a plan to get to the final image.

[hugh_hill]

John, Mr. Smith, Ian & Steve thanks for your comments.

ﾑJohnﾒ thanks for viewing, Mr. Smith & Ian, yeah the metric system here sucks, every time you finally get your head round it they only go and change it again!

Steve good luck on that image!

 

I suppose I am just going to have to buy another Gig of ram and start building. I will let you guy's see what the end result is once finished, the project incidentally is set around accessible transport for wheelchair users here in London.

BTW the dead line is under a week! (ARRRRRRRRRGH!)

[hugh_hill]

Hey Steve I finished, it is a 130cm X 130cm at 300ppi, there are around 65-70 layers used and the finished file size is 1.67Gb and flattened to around the 700Mb mark.

Now I can have some much needed sleep!

 

 

Hugh

[hugh_hill]

Well here it is as promised,

Size 1.30cm X 130cm

Consisting of around 65 separate layers.

I was commissioned by 'Transport for London' formerly known as 'London Transport'

the piece can now be seen in the transport museum in Covent Garden not that any of you guy's will go there.

 

Regards and thanks for your help.<div></div>

[gib]

I visited that museum in 1996....it was a treat then and I am sure it is now.....well worth a visit.