Artwork Guidelines

Artwork Quality for Glass Gobos

Our gobos can only be as good as your artwork. We make our glass gobos in ultra high optical resolution — 600 DPI, twice the resolution of high fidelity photographic prints. However, the quality of the gobo is limited by the quality of your artwork. Please help us achieving the best results by providing us clean, crisp images by following the artwork guidelines below.

Artwork Quality for Metal Gobos

While we prefer professional vector artwork, we can work from most artwork as metal gobo designs don't require high resolution art. However, any negative space or encapsulation (shape within a shape) must be supported with bridging, similar to paint stencils.

If it looks good on your screen, it's probably ok for us.

Ideally we'd like to get your art in one of the professional formats described below but we are quite flexible. Try this: zoom your artwork so it fills about half the screen. If it looks clean, then it should be ok for gobo production.

Poor Artwork

We do smaller adjustments and redraws at no charge. For larger jobs, we charge a small fee and will quote this before producing the gobo.

Artwork Dimensions

The artwork does not need to be sized to the gobo dimensions. We automatically adjust it to the correct gobo image diameter suitable for the fixture. Let us know if you have special requirements, such as an exact projection size.

Color Reference

We usually match the colors of your artwork with the colors of our Standard Color Palette. If you require us to match your colors exactly, please state this in the order sheet. This may incur additional costs. We are able to match virtually any color, but we cannot guarantee the exact match of your colors in the resulting projection due to variations in the fixtures and projection surface. Please let us know if you have special requirements.

How to Submit your Gobo Artwork

Automatically per file upload when you place your order online.
You can email your files to artwork@gobosource.com (max. size 15MB).
We can email you an upload link for extremely large files.

Electronic Format

Artwork is automatically transferred to our servers when the order is placed at our website. Alternatively, you can email us with the file attached to artwork@gobosource.com

Vector Format - Metal, BW & Colored Gobos

For line art designs or typical illustrations, we require vector format. Please convert text to a path to prevent possible problems with font tracing, especially with serif and ornate fonts. If fonts are linked to your artwork file and not embedded, potential mismatches and issues with font licensing may occur when we open your project file.

The appropriate file formats for sharing your vector art are:

.ai (Adobe Illustrator)
.svg (Scalable Vector Graphics)
.eps (Encapsulated Postscript)
.wmf (Windows Meta File)
.pdf (Portable Document Format)
NOTE: .pdf MUST be exported with preserve Illustrator editing capabilities option

If you can only provide bitmap format, such as .jpg or .gif for our line art gobos, we may need to rework your artwork at an additional charge of $49.00. Please save the design in the highest possible quality (lowest compression).

Bitmap Format - Grayscale Gobos

For halftone, gradients or photographic oriented designs, we require a high-resoultion (1200 px x 1200 px) bitmap file. The file format for grayscale artwork should preferably be:

.bmp (Bitmap)
.tiff (Tagged Image File Format)
.png (Portable Network Graphic)
.eps (Encapsulated Postscript)
.psd (Photoshop Document)
.jpg/.jpeg/.jif (Joint Photographic Experts Group Format)
NOTE: .jpg MUST exported with Quality: 100 or Compression: <3:1

For professional art, please provide a minimum resolution of 300 dpi and a size of minimum 4" by 4" (1200 px x 1200 px), but not larger than 8-1/2" x 11".

DPI Guidelines

Keystone Correction

Projected images will experience distortion if the projection surface is not exactly perpendicular with the projector optics. Generally, this has a negligible effect on projected artwork and signs.

However, in some extreme cases, the gobo artwork must be stretched in a process called "keystone correction" to offset distortion due to an excessively large projection angle (typically greater than 45°.)

If keystone correction is required for your installation, a member of our sales team will reach out help walk you through the measurement process to ensure your artwork recieves proper adjustment. Each gobo projector we sell includes a measuring grid gobo to assist in the keystone process.

NOTE: To keystone a stock gobo design, a custom colored glass gobo must be ordered.