Need logo help!!!!!

[Romane19]

I have a question. I made a jpeg company logo with pixels at 6000 X 3000. Is that good or bad? Will the quality show clear and big enough for most TVs/ theater screens (Yeah i said it)? I have no idea how big to make this image but I used photoshop and it came out to 140 megs. What is the size you guys use to make your logo?

[Zak Forsman]

those are some peculiar dimensions. what made you choose 2:1?

for reference... 4K is 4096x3112, 2K is 2048x1556.

[Romane19]

those are some peculiar dimensions. what made you choose 2:1?

for reference... 4K is 4096x3112, 2K is 2048x1556.

Thanks so much Zak. I'm a complete newb to the dimensions thingy. I'm guessing 4K is the best though right? so all i have to do is downsize my logo to the 4k?

[Romane19]

Also Zak i chose 2:1 randomly. I was thinking the bigger the file the better it will look.

[milksac]

What is the size you guys use to make your logo?
I make it as big as it needs to be.
That means fpr HD - 1920 x 1080 and for SD = 720 x 486.
What's the point of making a 6000 x 3000 image if you're going to scale it down to a lower resolution? On the other hand, if you plan on flying the logo around in AE then sure the extra res helps.

[Prodigi Pictures]

As an art director I've designed about 40 logos. There is no industry standard, but I've developed my own Best Practices. Here is what I suggest:

2D LOGOS:
1.) You can sketch your ideas in any software package you want (I usually work in Photoshop because I know it the best) but your final 2D logo needs to be in Illustrator. Photoshop is (mostly) a raster program (although it handles text and some other items as vector data). I'm not a wiz at Illustrator so I often have a junior artist in my department recreate my Photoshop work as an Illustrator file. Find someone on Craig's List. They can recreate your raster image as a vector image for $50.00.
2.) Now that the image is a vector file you can easily print it or import it into any other package.
3.) If you must work with a non-vector file don't save it as a jpg. Even the highest resolution jpg is a compressed file format. Save it as a .tiff or .tga.
4.) The only reasons to work with a compressed format (like .jpg) are:
- your importing the graphic into a software package that doesn't read .tiff or .tga
- your imbedding the graphic into a document (such as a .pdf) that will compress the image anyways. The use of such a large file will be wasted in a .pdf.
- your emailing the image to someone and file size is an issue.
- your printing something at Kinko's. I've done so much printing at Kinko's and I can't see a qualitative difference between any .jpg or any .tiff I've printed there.

* One exception to this is a logo that is entirely text. Since Photoshop treats text as vector data you can scale it up and down to any size. There are a tremendous amount of tweaks you can do to the vectorized text in Photoshop...but the moment you flatten the text layer its now rasterized and cannot scale infinitely without pixellating.

3D LOGOS:
1.) You can sketch your ideas in any software (again, I tend to sketch out 3D logos in Photoshop. I can work as fast as I think in Photoshop). However, the final file is going to end up in a 3D program (such as Maya, 3ds Max, Lightwave, Modo.)
2.) The complexity of the file will be vast. You will have to model, texture and light the logo. However, its worth it. Using perspective tools in Photoshop only creates an approximation of the object's perspective in 3D space. In a professional 3D package it will be absolutely accurate. You can rotate the object in 3D space and achieve different angles of the logo. You can match the logo's perspective to whatever artwork (such as a movie poster) the logo will be seen with.
3.) Usually, you'll be exporting the logo as a 2D rasterized image with an Alpha Channel. An Alpha Channel works just like a green screen...it knows that any negative space in the image is transparent and positive space isn't. This will allow you to composite the 3D logo (which is actually a 2D image of a 3D logo, but I digress) into another graphic (such as your movie poster).

Is this all there is to know about the technical side of logos? Not at all. It's important to understand the difference between LPI (lines per inch) DPI (dots per inch) relative DPI (which confuses the hell out of most professionals) and objective DPI (a term I made up to help explain these things to so-called graphics professionals who insist on the dumbest things). Here is a brief overview:

DPI: an acronym for Dots Per Inch, which refers to how many dots of ink (or pixels on a screen) an object is capable of being printed/displayed at before "rezzing out" or pixellating. Screens display images at 72 DPI and printing (generally) requires images to be created for 300 DPI (there are exceptions to this rule, in which it is best to print at 400 DPI or the technology being used can't benefit from higher DPI images and therefore its a waste of time working above their technical specs).
LPI: an acronym for Lines Per Inch. Lines Per Inch is an issue in offset printing. It's used to this day, even though it refers to the outdated use of creating silkscreens for each color layer in your final printed image (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black for traditional CMYK prints). Most offset printers have moved to digital pre-press and therefore no longer use silk screens. The term is still used all the time...and to be honest, I'm not sure why. This goes beyond my technical knowledge.

SUBJECTIVE DPI: You save an image as 72 DPI in photoshop. This doesn't mean anything. People obsess over it. They'll flip when they open the file and say "But, I need a 300 DPI image!" You say to them "The actual resolution of the file is 3000 pixels by 3000 pixels. I want you to print the image at 10 inches by 10 inches. That is 300 DPI." They freak out, spin in circles and insist you're doing it wrong. Apparently, simple math is difficult for these people. Pity them.

The point is simple. DPI is not a file setting. It isn't absolute. There is no magic software that will prevent you from printing an 600x600 image at 1200x1200 and therefore get a print with soft, blocky, pixellated edges and poor color banding. You have to know this. You're the gatekeeper for what size you can print at.

OBJECTIVE DPI: This is a silly term I've made up to help the mathematically challenged. I'll say "My movie poster is designed at 8,100 pixels x 12,000 pixels. Therefore it's objective DPI is 27 inches by 40 inches or less." I run into people all the time (in offset printshops, online printers, artists in my art department, people working on my film) who will say "Yes, but what DPI does the file say?" I say "It doesn't matter what the file says. That's training wheels for people who can't do math. The resolution is 8,100 x 12,000. Divide each number by 300. That's the maximum inches the image can be printed at. Trust me. Just breath deep, calm down and hit the print button. Newton, Copernicus and I take full responsibility for simple division."

Why does this matter? I could take the extra 30 seconds to reset the DPI in my photoshop file, right? Here is why...

...beginners need some hand holding. I did as well ten years ago. I understand this (what I don't understand are professionals who make a living at this, have been doing it longer than I have and can't perform simple arithmetic...but, I digress). As a graphics professional I decide how big or small an image will be printed. DPI describes the relationship between the amount of information in a file and the real world scale it will be printed at...or a virtual camera in a 3D package. Lets say I want to animate some laurel leaves in a trailer for an award winning short. I ask myself "what is the resolution of the final file?" Then, I ask myself "How close will the laurel leaves get to the virtual camera in Final Cut Pro, After Effects or Maya?" If the laurel leaves will be quite small in the frame (say, 50% of the total height of the frame) then I know I can design them at very low resolution. If I have to animate them and move them towards the camera I need the laurel leaves to be higher resolution. If I'm going to have them zoom past the camera then they need to be even higher.

ONE FINAL NOTE:
There is a common myth that you can print high resolution images smaller with no repercussions. "Hey, I got myself a 3,000 pixel by 3,000 pixel logo! I can print this at 1 inch by 1 inch and it'll look dandy, right?" The answer is no. The reason...softening caused by interpolation. Or, put more simply, the image will look soft because the software still reads all the data in the file and creates an approximation of that data as a smaller file.

What's the solution? Save the high res file at the lower resolution in photoshop and apply sharpening filters until the image matches the original sharpness. Usually this means applying "Unsharp mask" (one of the least intuitive names for any sharpening tool). Google this and you'll find settings that work for you. Don't overdue it! For beginners it is best to apply unsharp mask, get it to where the sharpness matches your original image, walk away five minutes, come back and then make sure your choice wasn't exaggerated. It is easy to become an oversharpness junky. "Just five more percent. I can that one edge sharper! I KNOW IT!" If you oversharpen your image you'll get color fringing and "roping" along edges (color fringing is oddly colored pixels that appear along oversharpened edges. Roping is a halo about 1-2 pixels thick that also occurs from oversharpening.)

Thus endeth the lesson.

[Romane19]

As an art director I've designed about 40 logos. There is no industry standard, but I've developed my own Best Practices. Here is what I suggest:

2D LOGOS:
1.) You can sketch your ideas in any software package you want (I usually work in Photoshop because I know it the best) but your final 2D logo needs to be in Illustrator. Photoshop is (mostly) a raster program (although it handles text and some other items as vector data). I'm not a wiz at Illustrator so I often have a junior artist in my department recreate my Photoshop work as an Illustrator file. Find someone on Craig's List. They can recreate your raster image as a vector image for $50.00.
2.) Now that the image is a vector file you can easily print it or import it into any other package.
3.) If you must work with a non-vector file don't save it as a jpg. Even the highest resolution jpg is a compressed file format. Save it as a .tiff or .tga.
4.) The only reasons to work with a compressed format (like .jpg) are:
- your importing the graphic into a software package that doesn't read .tiff or .tga
- your imbedding the graphic into a document (such as a .pdf) that will compress the image anyways. The use of such a large file will be wasted in a .pdf.
- your emailing the image to someone and file size is an issue.
- your printing something at Kinko's. I've done so much printing at Kinko's and I can't see a qualitative difference between any .jpg or any .tiff I've printed there.

* One exception to this is a logo that is entirely text. Since Photoshop treats text as vector data you can scale it up and down to any size. There are a tremendous amount of tweaks you can do to the vectorized text in Photoshop...but the moment you flatten the text layer its now rasterized and cannot scale infinitely without pixellating.

3D LOGOS:
1.) You can sketch your ideas in any software (again, I tend to sketch out 3D logos in Photoshop. I can work as fast as I think in Photoshop). However, the final file is going to end up in a 3D program (such as Maya, 3ds Max, Lightwave, Modo.)
2.) The complexity of the file will be vast. You will have to model, texture and light the logo. However, its worth it. Using perspective tools in Photoshop only creates an approximation of the object's perspective in 3D space. In a professional 3D package it will be absolutely accurate. You can rotate the object in 3D space and achieve different angles of the logo. You can match the logo's perspective to whatever artwork (such as a movie poster) the logo will be seen with.
3.) Usually, you'll be exporting the logo as a 2D rasterized image with an Alpha Channel. An Alpha Channel works just like a green screen...it knows that any negative space in the image is transparent and positive space isn't. This will allow you to composite the 3D logo (which is actually a 2D image of a 3D logo, but I digress) into another graphic (such as your movie poster).

Is this all there is to know about the technical side of logos? Not at all. It's important to understand the difference between LPI (lines per inch) DPI (dots per inch) relative DPI (which confuses the hell out of most professionals) and objective DPI (a term I made up to help explain these things to so-called graphics professionals who insist on the dumbest things). Here is a brief overview:

DPI: an acronym for Dots Per Inch, which refers to how many dots of ink (or pixels on a screen) an object is capable of being printed/displayed at before "rezzing out" or pixellating. Screens display images at 72 DPI and printing (generally) requires images to be created for 300 DPI (there are exceptions to this rule, in which it is best to print at 400 DPI or the technology being used can't benefit from higher DPI images and therefore its a waste of time working above their technical specs).
LPI: an acronym for Lines Per Inch. Lines Per Inch is an issue in offset printing. It's used to this day, even though it refers to the outdated use of creating silkscreens for each color layer in your final printed image (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black for traditional CMYK prints). Most offset printers have moved to digital pre-press and therefore no longer use silk screens. The term is still used all the time...and to be honest, I'm not sure why. This goes beyond my technical knowledge.

SUBJECTIVE DPI: You save an image as 72 DPI in photoshop. This doesn't mean anything. People obsess over it. They'll flip when they open the file and say "But, I need a 300 DPI image!" You say to them "The actual resolution of the file is 3000 pixels by 3000 pixels. I want you to print the image at 10 inches by 10 inches. That is 300 DPI." They freak out, spin in circles and insist you're doing it wrong. Apparently, simple math is difficult for these people. Pity them.

The point is simple. DPI is not a file setting. It isn't absolute. There is no magic software that will prevent you from printing an 600x600 image at 1200x1200 and therefore get a print with soft, blocky, pixellated edges and poor color banding. You have to know this. You're the gatekeeper for what size you can print at.

OBJECTIVE DPI: This is a silly term I've made up to help the mathematically challenged. I'll say "My movie poster is designed at 8,100 pixels x 12,000 pixels. Therefore it's objective DPI is 27 inches by 40 inches or less." I run into people all the time (in offset printshops, online printers, artists in my art department, people working on my film) who will say "Yes, but what DPI does the file say?" I say "It doesn't matter what the file says. That's training wheels for people who can't do math. The resolution is 8,100 x 12,000. Divide each number by 300. That's the maximum inches the image can be printed at. Trust me. Just breath deep, calm down and hit the print button. Newton, Copernicus and I take full responsibility for simple division."

Why does this matter? I could take the extra 30 seconds to reset the DPI in my photoshop file, right? Here is why...

...beginners need some hand holding. I did as well ten years ago. I understand this (what I don't understand are professionals who make a living at this, have been doing it longer than I have and can't perform simple arithmetic...but, I digress). As a graphics professional I decide how big or small an image will be printed. DPI describes the relationship between the amount of information in a file and the real world scale it will be printed at...or a virtual camera in a 3D package. Lets say I want to animate some laurel leaves in a trailer for an award winning short. I ask myself "what is the resolution of the final file?" Then, I ask myself "How close will the laurel leaves get to the virtual camera in Final Cut Pro, After Effects or Maya?" If the laurel leaves will be quite small in the frame (say, 50% of the total height of the frame) then I know I can design them at very low resolution. If I have to animate them and move them towards the camera I need the laurel leaves to be higher resolution. If I'm going to have them zoom past the camera then they need to be even higher.

ONE FINAL NOTE:
There is a common myth that you can print high resolution images smaller with no repercussions. "Hey, I got myself a 3,000 pixel by 3,000 pixel logo! I can print this at 1 inch by 1 inch and it'll look dandy, right?" The answer is no. The reason...softening caused by interpolation. Or, put more simply, the image will look soft because the software still reads all the data in the file and creates an approximation of that data as a smaller file.

What's the solution? Save the high res file at the lower resolution in photoshop and apply sharpening filters until the image matches the original sharpness. Usually this means applying "Unsharp mask" (one of the least intuitive names for any sharpening tool). Google this and you'll find settings that work for you. Don't overdue it! For beginners it is best to apply unsharp mask, get it to where the sharpness matches your original image, walk away five minutes, come back and then make sure your choice wasn't exaggerated. It is easy to become an oversharpness junky. "Just five more percent. I can that one edge sharper! I KNOW IT!" If you oversharpen your image you'll get color fringing and "roping" along edges (color fringing is oddly colored pixels that appear along oversharpened edges. Roping is a halo about 1-2 pixels thick that also occurs from oversharpening.)

Thus endeth the lesson.

WOW!!!!! Prodigi thanks so much man. Is this guy awesome or what:thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumbsup::thumb sup::thumbsup::thumbsup: Any other question that I had to ask about my logo you pretty much nailed it. Now I'm confident with making my logo. I would also like to say thank you to Zak for pointing out some stuff for me too. Prodigi once again another awesome post man. Much Thanks. Muchas Gracias

[Romane19]

Hey Guys this is my logo. http://i149.photobucket.com/albums/s45/youngrobb/SimpleRobbEntertainmentOfficialComp.jpg

[Romane19]

I make it as big as it needs to be.
That means fpr HD - 1920 x 1080 and for SD = 720 x 486.
What's the point of making a 6000 x 3000 image if you're going to scale it down to a lower resolution? On the other hand, if you plan on flying the logo around in AE then sure the extra res helps.

Thanks