If you’ve ever printed a large format poster at the Media Center, we hope you’ve found the process to be fairly straightforward. If not, you’ll be happy to learn we’re introducing some user-friendly changes for the Fall of ’17.

The three most common programs for poster design are Adobe InDesign (our strong recommendation) Microsoft PowerPoint, and Google Slides. Any of those applications can send a job to our large format printer. In the past this has involved plugging in multiple settings to ensure color fidelity, proper orientation, and page size. With nearly 100 color profiles, five printer options, and a different set of dialog boxes for each of the programs above, it’s been easy to understand why folks might need a hand.

As Adobe Creative Suite and computer operating systems have evolved, we’ve been able to introduce some convenient presets to ease the printing process. The new instructions for our favorite programs are outlined below.

Adobe InDesign on Mac
Printing from InDesign will be as easy as selecting File > Print Presets > Poster 48×35… When the print dialog box appears, simply click print, and then approve the job by signing in to our release station (located near the large format printer itself).

This preset assumes posters have been sized to 48 inches in width by 35 inches in height using File > Document Setup at the beginning of the design process, and that all image files included in the design are stored locally on the computer in use.

Microsoft PowerPoint on Mac
In PowerPoint, users will simply choose File > Print… select Print Standard Large Format Poster (48×35) from the “Printer:” drop-down menu, and then click print.

As with InDesign, the job will need to be approved from our release station. The preset assumes posters have been sized to 48″ by 35″ using File > Page Setup at the beginning of the design process.

Google Slides on Mac
While convenient for designing online, Google Slides requires the most involved printing process. Select File > Print within Google Slides itself (if you make the same selection from your web browser, you’ll end up printing the entire web page – including Google frames, buttons, and menus – rather than your poster alone). When the print dialog box appears, click the link in the lower left labeled “Print using system dialog…” and then select Print Standard Large Format Poster (48×35) from the “Printer:” drop-down menu. You will also need to confirm that orientation is set to landscape. Click print.

Again, this preset assumes posters have been sized to 48″ by 35″ using File > Page Setup at the beginning of the design process.

While printing a pdf from Adobe Acrobat will be possible, presets will not be available. The process will be significantly more involved, so we recommend against using this workflow.

We hope these changes will be intuitive, and that they’ll quicken the task of printing a poster. As always, our student consultants will be available to help.