Poster Presentations (Framemaker)

Why use Framemaker for posters?

Why? Why not use Power Point? You can use PowerPoint to create elaborate posters... but PowerPoint/Windows drives fail to generate proper printer files. Yes, it works great to a color laser printer, but a plotter is a whole different beast. Different drivers, different print technologies, etc.

Is this common? OH YEAH! So much so that we are adopting a new policy. Regardless of how much lead time we have to try and print posters created with PowerPoint, if it doesn't print the first time, we won't spend any time trying to fixed and will bill full price for all wasted paper.

What works?? FrameMaker on Sun/Solaris. Flawlessly. Everytime. First print. Beautiful posters. And we know that all of the groups that come through here have been told that.

Canvas, CorelDraw, Illustrator and PaintShopPro (PC versions) all fail more than they succeed. Why? Ask Microsoft. It seems the more complicated the poster and the more colors/images/rich backgrounds there are, the more likely they are to fail.

FrameMaker on Sun/Solaris works like a charm. Everytime.

This section concerns itself mostly with using Framemaker (aka Frame)to create a poster document and print it. There are many options with Frame that will come from experience. For example, the colors on your screen may not be the same as what's printed. A good contact for this is Colleen Riley, who has made several "maps" indicating which are the best colors to use.

A short tutorial is available to help you get started making a poster in Framemaker, created by Tsun Ip.

What sizes of paper can I use for poster presentations?

The HP3500CP can print up to 54 inches wide by nearly unlimited length (the size of the paper roll).
Other common widths are 36 and 42 inches.
Types of paper: heavy bond, normal bond, and high gloss.

Getting ready to make the poster

1. Create a subdirectory in your home directory (e.g., AGUmeeting), and this is where you can put all your text and images you want to include in your poster. This allows you to use "Import by Reference" option in Framemaker, essentially allowing you to store these files separately from the poster, amking it much easier to work with. Also, by keeping everything in a single directory, you will keep all the Framemaker "links" intact in case you need to move or rename the AGUmeeting directory.

2. Open Framemaker (from the screen tools).

When you open up a new file, remember that the dimensions are opposite what are indicated; that is, the "width" is the height of the poster, and the "height" is the width of the poster.
You can adjust the size of the poster on the screen by using the sizing tool (e.g., the little box with "100%" written on it) at the bottom of the screen.
Note that you have a dotted line box on the screen. You need to get rid of this, so: click on the triangle button ("tools"), located on the upper right margin of the window, and expand the toolbox. Select the pointer tool (arrow), select the dotted box in the window and delete it. If you want to create a new margin, use the rectangle drawing tool and create a new margin.

You will want to draw a new box to make a boarder for your poster. In the tool box click on the wire square frame and draw a box 1.25 inches in from the edges of your sheet. This allows for a nice printing boarder and also gives the printer a buffer zone.

What is my image's dpi?

You can this from xv - bring up the image and hit the "i" key to get image info.

How do I import an image into Frame?

Using the tools, click on the image button (looks like a dotted box with a circle, square, and triangle inside). This gives you a cross-hair on the cursor, and you can draw whatever sized box you want on your poster. Then go to File, Import, and import your image into this box. You'll get prompted for a szie, but can just use the default for simplicity.

What resolution do I want to import into Frame?

choices: 300, 150, 75, 72, custom.
for example, if your image is 600 dpi, then the 600 dpi option will give you a figure of 1 inch by 1 inch dimensions.
if 75 dpi, then 8 by 8 inch.
If you want a particular size, say 4 by 4, then figure this out by: 600/4 = 150 dpi.<

Normally you want to keep the highest resolution possible.

Also, you want to import and export images at the same resolution.

Try to get it on the screen at 300 to 600 dpi (your eye cannot differentiate much above 300 dpi). The printer is 600 dpi, so there is no point in trying to get a higher resolution.

What are the print/plotter best resolutions?

poster plotter = 600 dpi

codonix = 300 dpi

rubbish laser printers = 1200 dpi

How do I load files into a Frame poster?

It is best to keep linked files in the same directory as the frame document; this will prevent losses if you revise directories.
Reference vs Copy Into Document? By reference keeps the file smaller, and automatically updates the whole project when you make changes.

How do I go about printing a poster?

Select "print" Under the Frame/Edit menu.
Say you want to print a standard AGU meeting poster, 36 inches high and 72 inches across. Select "custom", "100%", then make sure the width is 36 inches, and the height is 72 inches. This is opposite of the default setting, and maybe a little counterintuitive, but think of it in terms of the width being the width of the printer paper, and the height being the length of the printer paper.
Select "print to postscript file".
Then you will need to contact "geomaint" to get this file printed by the poster printer. Allow some time for this, also you will probably want to print a low resolution copy to make sure your colors, margins etc are okay before going whole hog with the best paper.

Want to print a poster copy at 8.5 by 11?

Select Print/Scale at 15%, and set your width to 8.5 and height to 11.

Go through the same procedure as before, creating a postscript file.

But now you can print this yourself on any of the regular laser printers.

How do I know how intense to set colors, say for colored background to the text?

Some of it's by trial and error, but be warned that the color on your screen will not look the same printed out. When you set the colors (using Tools, then you can set both the color and the intensity all the way from pure (dark) to very sparse (speckled), using the little icons.

Here's some general settings to get you started:

Green = #6 from the darkest
Yellow = #5 from the darkest
Blue = #5 from the darkest
Cyan = #4 from the darkest
Red = #6 from the darkest
Gray = use Black, and the 8th from the darkest

You can also edit the color choices: select View/Color/Definitions, and work from there.

What is a good way to make presentations, such as power point?

When trying to find a common format for accepting/presenting presentations, I might suggest making everything a PDF document. That was anyone anywhere can view and review the presentation with the Acrobat Reader (free download, and install just about everywhere).

To do this from any of the presentation packages, just save/print to postscript and then from an xterm prompt:

% distill file.ps

This will generate file.pdf, view with acroread (menu pulldown or)

% acroread file.pdf

To keep high resolution imagery looking good, try one of the other customized distiller commands I have put on the systems:

% distill-300 file.ps
% distill-600 file.ps
% distill-1200 file.ps
% distill-2400 file.ps

300, 600, 1200 and 2400 dpi output, respectively.

For most uses, 600 dpi will work just fine.

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HTML is nice, but requires the overhead and confusion of a web browser. Some pages might not format properly either.

Converting to and from other formats might also cause other headaches.

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