Task: Improve Color, Tone, and Contrast to Create an Arresting Interpretation of the Image

One of the rewarding aspects of being part of an art production/design team on a large-scale project is seeing the tear sheets of the completed work. For this project, the “tear sheet” was a Land Rover wrapped in this beautiful photograph of a Scottish vista. The wrapped Rover was part of The Vanishing Game, a Land Rover interactive digital book experience and multi-media campaign (based on the novel by best-selling author William Boyd) that included installations on the streets of New York City.

Creating a Verdant Landscape
Tone, color, and contrast corrections moved the image to an arresting conclusion. The magenta cast was removed, the sky opened up and shaped, the sheep dotting the landscape made visible, and the greens made rich and verdant.

Sizing an Image for a Car Wrap: The Technical Details
When sizing images for car wraps and billboards, the accepted industry standard of 300 ppi to maintain print quality does not apply. Images can be printed at a much lower resolution. The reason has to do with viewing distance. Viewing distance is simply the distance from the print to the eyes of the viewer.  

The proper viewing distance of any size print is the diagonal length of an image multiplied by 1.5.  For example, the proper viewing distance for an 8”x10” print is 12.8”.  If you think about where you hold an 8”x10” print to comfortably view it,  it’s right around 12”-14″ from your eyes. At that distance, a print requires a resolution in the 233-300 ppi range otherwise, you’d see the printing dots. 

Whereas billboards and car wraps are viewed at great distances, thus the resolution can be much lower. In the case of this project, 72 ppi was used.  At that distance the dots of ink blend together.

The original file for the car wrap image  was 5760 px x 3840 px; which translates to 19 x 13 @ 300 ppi or 80” x 53” @ 72 ppi. The wrap was printed with a file enlarged 225%, to 12,960 px x 8,640 px (180” x 120” @ 72 ppi)

Image Selection for Car Wraps & Billboards
Can any image file hold up to a 225% enlargement? Absolutely not. It all depends on the capture quality, original resolution, and sharpness of the image.  A piece of advice: never start a car wrap project before carefully evaluating the file’s resolution and sharpness. You don’t want to get far into the design process only to discover the image file you’re basing the design on is unusable. If you need guidance, I can work with you on image selection.

The Backdrop
The billboard, pictured above, was also part of the project. The image selection involved a couple of iterations and an even greater enlargement (240” wide!) . I’ll be sharing the Before/Afters, and the process of getting to the final result, in an upcoming blog. If you’d like to read the article,  subscribe to my newsletter. I’ll shoot you an email when the article goes live.

Client: DKC News
Executive Producer: Kelly Markus
Project Manager: Scott Indermaur
A video about the Y+R campaign for The Vanishing Game is available at this link.

Copyright Belongs to the Respective Image Owners