Best way to work and manage a very large composite

[Bob Morecraft]

Has anyone com up with a easy way to make and work with a very large composite?

[davescm · Accepted solution]

What problems are you having in constructing this?

In general terms :

1. Label your layers with meaningful names

2. Use layer groups and label the groups

3. As you build up a large piece of work, save it incrementally as a PSD (or PSB if it is very large). By incrementally I mean filename001 ; filename002 .....etc. It will save you from posting on here with , "my file with a week of work is now corrupt what do I do..?.".

4. Consider your final output and viewing distance and don't work in an unnecessarily high resolution (you don't need 300dpi for a poster that will be viewed from 25 feet away)

Dave

[D Fosse]

The main thing, as Dave pointed out: you don't necessarily need 300 ppi. People will tell you that you do; don't listen to them. Very often that's just a misunderstanding.

My rule of thumb is that anything over 15 000 pixels long side is probably overkill.

[Chuck Uebele]

Depending on what you're doing and compositing, try using auxiliary files to save layered work, which means do your composite in many files, saving parts of your composites for possible future editing. Then use a flatten version of those auxiliary files in your final composite to keep the size down and editing speed up.

[Bob Morecraft]

Thanks trying my first large composit. Keep you all posted