Printing a tarpaulin for your company is a great way to advertise your products or services. Tarpaulins are a cost-effective way to get your products viewed by a wide range of people – which is why tarpaulins are important tools for advertising companies. However, making a tarpaulin isn’t easy. You’ll need to have the right image size for visibility, color correctness for accurate product representation, and the right resolution for high-quality tarpaulin printing, you’ll want to fulfil all of these to effectively capture the attention of your target audience.
When adding images and graphics to your tarpaulin design, you need to consider various factors before taking it to a tarpaulin printing services shop. We’ve listed down some of the critical aspects of tarpaulin printing for you to create stunning designs and gain more customers:
Resolution for Tarpaulins
As you start designing your tarpaulin layout, consider your desired viewing distance. How far do you want your audience to view your tarpaulin? Do you want them to see your tarpaulin from a few or over a hundred feet?
This is an important consideration when doing the layout of your tarpaulin, because the farther the viewing distance you want to achieve, the larger the image you need to print. However, larger images tend to have poorer resolutions, especially when printed. A 300-dpi image will be reduced to 14 dpi when stretched out on a 15-foot tarpaulin. Therefore, you should opt for higher DPI images for tarpaulins that are larger.
What makes images tricky to enlarge are their pixels. These picture elements become more noticeable as you enlarge an image, especially if a photo has low resolution. So, if you’re shooting your own photos, make sure that you are taking them in high resolution. You should also ensure that every photo you download from the internet is high resolution.
On the other hand, if you’re creating graphics, use vector images. This format works on large-scale printing projects because no matter how much you enlarge a vector image, it will always form a perfect line without any pixels.
Here’s a quick guide for the recommended DPI for tarpaulins according to the software used:
- If you’re using Photoshop for your tarpaulin, the recommended resolution is at least 300 DPI.
- For Adobe Illustrator uses, we recommend using between 100 to 300 DPI.

File Format for Printing
Using the right file format and image size for your tarpaulin’s printing allows you to reduce any pixelation or bad effects. Some of the most appropriate file types you can use for your tarpaulin designs are:
- Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) effectively eliminates pixelated edges.
- JPEG is perfect for overall image sharing and is supported by most applications.
- TIFF is ideal for printing and publishing your design.
- PNG is the file type to use for tarpaulin designs that require photos with transparency.
Utilizing these file formats properly allows you to ensure the quality of your tarpaulin print and make your marketing material more effective.

Issues to Look Out For
Before sending your design to a tarpaulin printing shop, you need to check it for some issues that may affect the print quality. First, make sure to check for pixelated edges and noise. You can do this by looking for random variations of brightness and color.
Some colors also produce noise when printed in large formats. To address this, you can zoom in on the image and blur out the noise on problematic areas to reduce splotchiness.
Finally, go through your design one last time and ensure that you’ve got the right image resolution and tarpaulin printing size. Once you’re all done, you can send your file off to printing.
Work With a Reliable Tarpaulin Printing Company
Aside from considering the factors listed above, you need to find a dependable printing company, like Limkaco Industries, Inc., to ensure that your tarpaulin turns out great. We specialize in large-format printing to suit your specific business requirements and help you reach your marketing goals. Reach out to us for more information.