Printing Artwork: Quality Differences between a Scan and Vector

mhanlen1

New member
Joined
Jun 9, 2009
Messages
5,608
Reaction score
351
Location
Fallbrook, California
Printing Artwork: Quality Differences between a Scan and Vector

So I'm to the point where I'm going to have someone print a custom CPO I've made. I know my way around photoshop very well, so I modified a 400dpi CPO scan to fit my Control Panel. I've not attempted a vector yet, because I'm not familiar with Illustrator. It appears that creating a vector image takes quite a long time. The question is, how well will a high quality scan print out, vs. a vector image? Has anyone ever tried both, and compared the result? Is a scan acceptable?

I searched for a thread about this, but couldn't find many comparisons. Maybe by search magic is a little off today, so I apologize.

Here is a direct link to the large format image I've created- beware it's massive.

Or here's a smaller version, for those with a slower connection.

Anyway, hope this thread may be helpful to other greenhorns like myself.
 
images

Vector artwork is generally used when the imagery is going to be scaled and you want the lines and dots to reproduce nicely with the same quality. Screen printers use Illustrator a lot for this reason.

If this is a one time thing it probably doesn't matter.
 
Vector artwork is generally used when the imagery is going to be scaled and you want the lines and dots to reproduce nicely with the same quality. Screen printers use Illustrator a lot for this reason.

If this is a one time thing it probably doesn't matter.

Gotcha. This is probably a one time deal... maybe 2 at most.




Does scanning a vinyl CPO introduce artifacts and grain that were not originally there? Like reflections off the vinyl texture, etc?
 
I have a reproduction CPO on my Strider that is Inkjet. The only real issue is the text is not as sharp as it would be if the source art were vectored and the CPO screen printed. It looks really nice though. You can totally make it look acceptable.
 
If you have a 300dpi (or 400 in your case) scan, you merely print it out at 300dpi and you have a great quality product. I printed out Jungle King artwork from a clean 300dpi scan and the quality was excellent.

The issue you really need to be concerned about is color matching. For the color inkjet I had, blues never came out even remotely correct.
 
colors will always be a problem with inkjetting they just arnt the same as the silkscreen inks
apples and oranges. But there are alot of other difference between raster and vectoring printing. vector will ALWYS give you the best black rgb or cymk even at 100% just dont look at jet black as a vector fill. small details like text will be fuzzy from antiazliting and with vectors you can scale to any size without losing quaitly or dpi. Vecotors also give you complete control oevr trying to get the best color matches since you can select just the Yellow or just the blue and change or correct, where as with a raster you can only adjust hues or using selctive color in PS to try to get those tones in blance or aprox to what yuod like. Unfirtunatly not all graphics can be vectored. but some art can be layered raster and vector to get you the best results.
http://www.coinopspace.com/profiles/blogs/project-pacmania-part-1
http://www.coinopspace.com/profiles/blogs/project-pacmania-part-deux
 
Back
Top Bottom