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Adding full color graphics to vinyl banners will give your banner designs with greater impact and a more professional appearance. Putting a full color photograph on your vinyl banner is most often the easiest and best way to do this.

When you want to add a photo or image to a vinyl banner design, try to keep a few things in mind. In order to look crisp and clear it must have the most appropriate resolution. For most large display projects such as popup displays, vinyl banners, window graphics and graphic backdrops, try to keep resolution at about 100 ppi (pixels per inch) at full size.

In other words if you have an original image that is 8" x 10" with a resplution of 300 ppi - a standard resolution used for offset printing - then this image can be blown up to roughly 24" x 30". That will give you a final resolution of 100 ppi. In many cases you can often use as low as 50 ppi and still get good quality output, because these displays are normally meant to be viewed from at least 10 feet away.

Second, it is often necessary to brighten up the colors of your graphics. One way to do this is to increase the contrast. If you use Photoshop the easiest way to do this is by "pinching" the levels controls. Open the levels control window and push the control for the shadows towards the middle (to the right). Then push the highlights control to the left. This will brighten your light colors and darken your dark colors while clearing up some of the "mudiness" of the mid tones.

"Sharpening" your images will also make them look brighter. Punch up your images with a bit of sharpening and they will almost always appear crisper with greater impact. But don't go overboard.

Last but not least, you should work in CMYK mode rather than RGB. Vinyl banners are usually printed on CMYK printing devices using solvent inks. If you send RGB images to the printer you will be counting on your printer to convert them to CMYK. This is often not as reliable as converting them yourself before sending the images down to the printer. RGB can often be misleading since it can display more colors than can be printed by CMYK.

What that means is that there are colors you can see on a computer monitor that you simply cannot reproduce with CMYK inks especially not with solvent based inks on a material such as vinyl. You might as well know this before you get the printing done. If it is necessary to have a specific color and if time permits a proof can be printed on the actual vinyl banner material to give you a clear picture of how the finished product will look when printed.

Another important point to keep in mind is that the choice of ink will have an impact on the quality of the job. It is usually advisable to use true solvent inks for outdoor projects because they are best for full color printing that will be used in direct sunlight or other harsh weather conditions such as rain or snow.

Unlike water-based inks, solvent inks do not fade as quickly when exposed to UV rays, and stand up to wind and rain much better. Non solvent inks will usuallyfade much faster in direct sunlight. Even for indoor projects it is often better to use solvent-based inks because they produce a much more durable final result. This is especially important for applications like trade show banners or event backdrops which will likely be rolled and unrolled many times, and be handled a lot.