1. Choose your photo or artwork to be printed.

Most any picture looks great at the gigantic size of 18" x 24", especially portraits and landscapes. You can also take advantage of ShortRunPosters.com for band posters, commercial printing, wall charts, height charts, pin the tail on the "------" posters, large scale maps, chore charts, calendars and much, much more!

All posters are printed on 80# coated cover weight paper. The poster size is 18" x 24" and the image area is 17" x 23" (1/2" white border on all sides).

2. Check resolution and file type.

We suggest that your image file be a minimum of 150 DPI (dots per inch) at 100% print size, there is no maximum DPI. Resolution is the most important aspect of large scale printing, because when an image size is scaled up, the resolution is decreased accordingly. A good analogy is a static amount of sand in a sandbox - the bigger the sandbox, the less sand there is to evenly cover the bottom. If it gets too big, there will barely be any sand at all. Please use the chart below to determine if you have the correct resolution. We only accept the following file formats: .tif, .bmp, .ps, .eps, .pdf, .jpg and .png.

When selecting an image to be printed, there are a few guidelines to follow:

• Cell phone pictures will not print correctly - these images are too small
• Using a digital camera less than 6 megapixel will not deliver favorable results
• Increasing the resolution of an image in an editing program will not increase actual resolution.
• Images from web sites are standardized at 72 DPI, this resolution will not print correctly
• Do not include crop marks, color bars, file names or any other "extras", as these WILL be printed. The entire file you submit will be printed as is, regardless of actual size.
• PLEASE NOTE: Please submit single image files only! Uploading multiple page PDF files will result in printing the first page only. We are not responsible for correcting this mistake.
• For more accurate color, please download and use our ICC profile here.

3. Check image size and aspect ratio.

At ShortRunPosters.com we rotate and proportionally scale all images to achieve the largest printable area for each image. There is no need to submit specifically a "landscape" or "portrait" orientated image, as our automation process rotates images to the correct position. If you have an image that does not conform to the standard sizes above, for instance a square image, we will proportionally scale the image to fit the printable area. See illustration below:

In the above example, an image with the correct aspect ratio will fit into the 17 x 23 image area correctly, leaving a 1/2" white border on all sides. This border is standard on all posters.

In this example, a square image will be proportionally scaled and centered leaving extra white space past the standard 1/2" border.

4. A few things to know about our service.

A few things about the posters themselves:

• All posters are printed on 18" x 24" paper and the image area is 17" x 23" (1/2" border)
• We use an 80# coated cover paper, a little thinner than a paperback book's cover
• We print with 4 color process, any RGB files will be converted before printing or on the fly
• All images are rotated and proportionally scaled to fit the maximum print area
• Images need to be at least 150 DPI at 100% to print properly
• Do not include crop marks, color bars, file names or other "extras". The entire file you submit will be printed as is.
• If you are creating a file from scratch, start with the dimensions of 17" x 23" - this is our full image area.

Shipping and payment:

• We accept Visa, Master Card, Discover, American Express and PayPal
• 5-Day Standard Turnaround is shipped Ground and is a flat $10 per order within the continental US - no matter how many different posters you order!
• 3-Day Express Production is any UPS service - you choose your own shipping.
• We ship our posters in various sized tubes, and for large orders we ship flat
• You can check your order status by logging into your account and selecting "Order History"

Other:

• Production time starts the same day if the order is received before 1PM, otherwise it starts the following business day. For instance, if a Express 3-Day order is received at 11AM Tuesday, the order will ship out -at the latest- on Friday.
• Shipping time is not included in production time
• We print our logo (about 2.5" square), a bar code and order number on the back of every poster. If this is something that you don't want, you may want to consider ordering from our sister site, XeikonPrints.com.