Printing a map?

[mreading247]

I've nearly finished a map for one of my DnD groups and I wanted to make a poster size copy to show them all (and maybe hang on my wall or something). I thought I'd ask here if anyone has advice on the best and cheapest ways to get your maps printed. Or just tips on mistakes not to make when getting a map printed. If it matters for advice, I'm in the Midwestern USA. Thanks!

[Kellerica]

I'm obviously not American, but I'd imagine things can't be that different from Europe over there... We have quite a number of printing houses in larger cities here, and they do things like poster printing on a pretty standard basis. In my experience, getting something like 5-10 copies of a poster doesn't tend to cost that much as long as they can do it with digital printers and not an off-set machine. Easiest way usually is just phoning or emailing a business like this, and just asking them how much they would take for a small job like this. Contact several and compare prices if you want.

General tips on printing (please ignore me if you know this already, you didn't specify how familiar you are with print media in general so I apologize if it sounds like I'm explaining obvious things like you're an idiot...): one, remember to convert your map to a CMYK color profile, FOGRA39 is a good standard profile unless the printing house advises you otherwise; and two, I strongly recommend giving your map a slight brightness boost before sending it onward, as the ink will always make your map end up darker in tone than it looks on your computer screen. You can't still completely avoid the colors getting darker, but you can at least to try and balance it out.

[mreading247]

Don't worry, you're not explaining obvious things to me. I know practically nothing and that was all really useful to me. Thank you!

[Kellerica]

Oh, good! Glad if that helped.

Also, do keep in mind that these printing houses are generally used to dealing in large amounts of prints (when you have big advertisements and the like printed, the clients can very typically order several hundred of copies), so the difference in price may not be really that significant if you order 10 or 20 copies. Obviously you probably won't be needing 100 maps, but it's still good to keep in mind that it might be a good idea to get some extra copies just in case, as it most likely will not cost you that much more anyway.