Poster printing (ideally in Germany)?

[bartmoss]

Hi All,

Has anybody got experiences with poster printing services printing their maps?

I want to get my Orion Spur map printed but I haven't really found any that convinced me, none seems to handle .png's and there are usual weird file size limits (<50MB for example). Some don't even offer DIN sizes.

There are Cafepress and their apparent competition, Zazzle, but they produce in California so shipping to Germany is going to be a customs nightmare, and expensive. Even so, has anybody used them, are the results good?

Any advice appreciated.

- Nils

[GeneralMayhem]

I had good luck going to my local PDQ print shop when it came time to print my large hand drawn maps, and at the time I inquired about printing from image files. They were very helpful and talked about a wide variety of possible ways to print from various formats and resolutions. Check local business supply and print shops in your area, they might surprise you with the options available to you, and can help you with getting your files ready for printing.

[bartmoss]

Thanks - I actually ended up going to a local photo store, I got my test print back (circa 30x42 or so) and it looks nice. Ordered an A1 poster, which will be done tomorrow or Wednesday. Nice people, 20€ for the poster, 4€ (special offer, regular 5€) for the test print.

I'd still be interested in someone who does this via the Internet though.

[tilt]

20€ sounds like a good price - the printshop I usually use is about double that for A1.

[Bogie]

How about fellow Guildmember GamerPrinter? I believe he has his own printshop.
http://www.gamer-printshop.com

[Mark Oliva]

How about fellow Guildmember GamerPrinter? I believe he has his own printshop. And it is in Germany.
http://www.gamer-printshop.com

Could be, but the website lists an Ottawa, Illinois (USA) address.

[Bogie]

Yeah, that was my mistake. Dyslexia strikes again!

[bartmoss]

Yeah GP is somewhere in the new world, and I am not. :-(

That'll be expensive to ship. Plus, the postage isn't the real killer, having to deal with customs is.

Thanks for the suggestion tho :-)

[Gamerprinter]

Yeah, I noitced this thread earlier, but also noticed the (ideally in Germany) part, so I've stayed out of this thread. Yes, I print maps and yes, I print maps that get shipped world wide. If you go USPS it's reasonable in price to ship, but takes a couple weeks to get there (Europe). Although, I don't think customs is a real issue - I usually declare the value of my product as $0.00 so it doesn't have any snags. I've shipped maps to Canada, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Finland, Russia, China, Japan, Australia, Brazil and Mexico.

For anyone else. I charge $2.99 per square foot for color map printing (that's $16.94 for a 24" x 36" print) - shipping is about $10 to anywhere in US. $15 to Canada, and $25 to anywhere else. Also I charge for a shipping tube as part of the shipping cost. Maps are rolled up. Lamination is also available.

My website is for maps that already exist in the online store. If you want me to print your custom map, then you need to send via email or online source (where I can download it from). freerpgmaps (at) gmail (dot) com

[bartmoss]

Sorry for thread necromancy, but I wanted to add this in case anybody comes across this thread:

I ended up having my poster map printed from a local photo shop. Ended up paying 20 Euro or so and it took them 4-5 working days. I first ordered a smaller (cheaper) sample, which was glossy. For the bigger poster I went for a matte print, which was a good choice. I uploaded sample photos (of low quality) to my blog and to other threads.