Large Format Printing FAQs

For any other questions you may have, feel free to contact us.

Grand format is the upper end of large format, generally anything printed wider than about 10 feet. The distinction is practical rather than official: grand format work requires wider presses, different substrates, seaming capability and different install planning. XL Digital runs both, including a 16-foot roll-to-roll press for grand format outdoor work.

Judge a large format printer on four things: maximum print width, color management process, in-house finishing, and whether they will commit to your install date in writing. Ask for the seamless width, ask how they handle Pantone matching, ask whether sewing, laminating and cutting happen under their roof or get farmed out, and ask what happens if a job misses the date. XL Digital answers all four in the FAQs below.

Yes. XL Digital does trade and white-label production for sign shops, specialty printers and advertising agencies that need capacity, width or substrates they do not have in house. Work ships blind or branded to your specification. This is a significant part of the business, not an exception.

XL Digital Imaging is at 11625 Columbia Center Drive, Suite 200, Dallas, Texas 75229. All printing and finishing happens in a 30,000 square foot facility at that location. Local Dallas-Fort Worth clients can visit the plant, and finished work ships nationwide.

No. XL Digital ships completed work nationwide and produces for national retail brands, agencies, stadiums and event companies across the United States. Being in Dallas puts the plant within next-day ground shipping of most of Texas and the surrounding states, which shortens timelines for regional work.

No minimum. XL Digital produces single-piece jobs and multi-thousand-piece retail rollouts on the same floor. Per-unit cost drops as quantity rises, but there is no quantity floor that has to be cleared before a job is accepted. 

Yes. XL Digital hosts in-person tours of the Dallas plant, and there is a virtual tour on the website for anyone who cannot travel. Seeing the presses and the finishing floor is the fastest way to judge whether a printer can handle the scale and deadline you are describing.

Five things: finished size, quantity, material or intended application, where the graphic will live and for how long, and the date you need it. With those, XL Digital can return a quote quickly. If you are not sure what material to use, describe the environment and the print team will recommend one.

No. XL Digital quotes the whole project as one price including pre-press, an electronic proof, minor revisions, color matching and finishing. Simple text changes such as swapping a date or a directional arrow on a file already supplied are made at no charge.

No. Digital large format printing does not use separate plates per color, so a full-color photographic image costs the same to print as a two-color logo at the same size on the same material. Cost is driven by square footage, substrate and finishing instead.

Online commodity printers hit a low price by standardizing everything: one grade of material, no color matching, no proofing, no project management and no recourse if the piece is wrong. That works for a one-off yard sign. It does not work for a building wrap, a brand-critical retail rollout or anything with a fixed install date, where the cost of a reprint and a missed date dwarfs the savings on the print.

Per-unit cost drops with quantity on any single run, and repeat programs such as multi-store retail rollouts can be priced as a program rather than as individual jobs. Talk to XL Digital about the full annual scope rather than quoting one piece at a time.

Screens display at roughly 72 to 110 pixels per inch and at a size far smaller than the finished print. A file that looks sharp at 1,200 pixels wide on a monitor is being asked to cover 12 feet on a wall, which stretches every pixel to about a tenth of an inch. Judge a large format file by zooming to 100 percent at final size, not by how it looks fit-to-screen.

Send vector wherever possible. Vector artwork from Illustrator or InDesign scales to any size with no quality loss, which matters most for logos, type and hard-edged shapes. Photographic content has to be raster, so most real jobs are a mix: vector type and logos placed over a linked high-resolution image.

Yes. Build in bleed on any piece that will be trimmed, wrapped around a frame or stretched over a structure. The amount depends on the finishing method, and SEG fabric, pole-pocket banners and hardware-mounted rigid pieces each need a different allowance. Ask XL Digital for the bleed spec for your specific finishing before you build the file, not after.

Yes, outline all type before sending the file, or package the fonts with it. Outlining eliminates any chance of a font substitution changing your layout on a press that does not have your typeface installed. Keep a live-text version of the file on your side for future edits.

Build in CMYK for anything going to press, and supply Pantone values separately for brand colors that have to match exactly. RGB files will be converted, and that conversion can shift saturated blues, greens and oranges noticeably. Supplying the file already in CMYK lets you see the shift on your side rather than being surprised by it on the print.

Use the upload page on the XL Digital website. No password, no login and no special software is required, and it handles files far larger than any email system will accept. Files under 10 MB can also be emailed to art@xldigital.com.

Expect roughly 6 months to 3 years outdoors depending on material, ink, lamination and how much direct sun the piece takes. UV exposure is the dominant variable: the same graphic facing south in Dallas will fade meaningfully faster than one facing north. An overlaminate is the single cheapest way to extend outdoor life.

Mesh has thousands of small perforations that let wind pass through, while solid vinyl does not. Mesh is required for most building wraps, fence banners and any large outdoor face where wind load is a structural concern, and it is often required by permit. The tradeoff is opacity: mesh lets some light and background through, so colors read slightly softer than on solid vinyl.

XL Digital prints on vinyl in all its grades, mesh, canvas, flag cloth, mylar, window film, paper, carpet, rigid substrates including foam board, PVC, acrylic and corrugate, and a wide range of natural and synthetic fabrics. New substrates are added regularly, so a material not on that list is worth asking about rather than ruling out.

SEG stands for silicone edge graphic: a dye-sublimated fabric print with a thin silicone strip sewn into the edge that tucks into a channel on an aluminum frame. Use it when you want a frameless, seamless, wrinkle-free display that packs flat and reinstalls in minutes. It is the default for modern trade show backwalls, retail lightboxes and permanent interior displays.

Yes. Floor graphics are printed on textured, slip-resistant media with a rated coefficient of friction, and they use removable adhesives that lift cleanly without leaving residue at the end of the run. Specify the floor surface when ordering, because carpet, sealed concrete, terrazzo and vinyl tile each take a different adhesive.

Some can. Paper-based and certain PVC-free substrates are recyclable through standard streams, while laminated PVC vinyl generally is not. If sustainability is a requirement on the project, say so at the quote stage so material selection can account for it rather than being retrofitted.

Anything up to 16 feet in one dimension prints seamless. Above that, the piece is paneled and seamed, and the seams are planned around the artwork so they fall in the least visible place. On building-scale work, paneling is usually preferable anyway because it makes the piece installable by a normal crew.

Roll-to-roll printing feeds flexible material off a roll and is used for banners, wraps, fabric and anything that ships rolled. Flatbed printing prints directly onto rigid material such as foam board, PVC, acrylic and corrugate, with no mounting step. XL Digital runs both, plus a hybrid press that does either, so the substrate drives the press rather than the other way around.

XL Digital runs EFI VUTEk presses: the h5 hybrid roll-to-roll and flatbed LED press, the 5r+ 16-foot roll-to-roll LED press, the Q5r roll-to-roll press running up to 7,233 square feet per hour at 1200 dpi, and the FabriVU 340i+ for direct-to-fabric dye sublimation up to 3.4 meters wide. That mix is why the plant can quote roll, rigid and fabric work without subcontracting.

Yes. Double-sided work is standard on banners, flags, hanging signs and blockout fabric displays. Double-sided fabric is printed on a press with integrated flag printing technology so both faces register to each other. Specify whether the reverse side should read normally or mirror the front.

Monitors emit light and prints reflect it, so no screen can show exactly what ink on a substrate will look like. On top of that, every monitor is calibrated differently and the same print looks different under daylight, fluorescent and LED lighting. This is why color-critical jobs should be matched to a Pantone value or a physical swatch rather than to a screen.

Close, but not identical. The same ink on vinyl, fabric and rigid board absorbs and reflects light differently, so a color that is a perfect match on one substrate will read slightly different on another. When a campaign spans multiple materials, tell XL Digital up front so color can be managed across the set rather than optimized per piece.

Yes. Electronic proofs are provided free on request and are the right tool for confirming layout, spelling and content. They are not a color-matching tool, because every monitor renders differently. Hardcopy proofs printed on the actual selected material are available and are the only reliable way to sign off color, though there may be a charge.

Yes, and this is the reason a large share of XL Digital’s work comes from trade show, event and stadium clients. Give the install date and the show or venue’s material and freight rules at the quote stage. Work is scheduled backward from the install date, and shipping is booked to land inside the venue’s receiving window rather than whenever production finishes.

Shipping method depends on the product and your preference, and XL Digital has established relationships with multiple carriers. Billboards typically go FedEx Ground unless expedited delivery is requested. Most of Texas and adjacent states receive next-day service on ground shipping from Dallas.

Yes. Work can ship direct to a job site, an exhibit hall, an advance warehouse or individual store locations. For multi-location retail rollouts, orders are kitted by location so each store receives exactly its pieces and nothing else, which removes the sorting problem at the receiving end.

XL Digital coordinates installation for large-scale work including building wraps, stadium graphics and complex environmental installs. Tell the print team at the quote stage whether install is in scope, because installation method changes material selection, panel layout and how the piece is finished.

Every XL Digital job is inspected before it ships and is backed by a quality assurance guarantee. If something arrives damaged or does not match the approved proof, contact XL Digital immediately with photographs so a replacement can be produced and shipped. Raising it while the install window is still open is the difference between a fix and a missed date.