Sign Writer needs files in certain format!

robert_harper_2000

I had hoped my designer could have done better work.... but he has bought some drafts which show my pictures in squares! It looks stupid, I explained I wanted the shape in whatever shape of the product but he hasn't got photoshop, I do but can keep the background transparent. When I save it with a transparent background in a pdf, when opened it shows background as white!

Any ideas?

custardy

would they be able to download the trial photoshop?
then you wouldnt have to save to PDF?

http://www.adobe.com/downloads/

or one of these
http://www.raymond.cc/blog/archives/2008/10/02/how-to-open-psd-extension-files-without-installing-adobe-photoshop/
http://www.online-tech-tips.com/cool-websites/file-viewer/

robert_harper_2000

Well think may have found out, but for reference you need to create a new layer save for web click done and save it as a gif as jpegs don't support transparent backgrounds

chunter

gif or png for tramsparent backgrounds.

PDFs? Surely a signwriter needs the graphics in vector format,
not in printed page format.

See Illustrator or Coreldraw as 2 examples of vector design packages.

isofa

Adobe PDFs are widely used as final pre-press files, they are native postscript files if created from vector formats such as Illustrator, they are effectively just a format of an EPS, which can also hold embedded bitmaps. (You can open and edit PDFs natively in Illustrator too).

Ideally you'd create it as an EPS ready for cutting, but dependingon the requirement it's perfectly possible and acceptable to be using a correctly produced PDF.

Creating images for the web and print, are two very different processes. If you are creating a high quality print/cut and it requires a photographic or bitmap image, use a TIFF with a correct alpha channel for the transparency, not a GIF, which wouldn't be acceptable for professional output.

If your designer doesn't have Photoshop, I'd suggest he isn't a designer!