CPO image size

[GodSend25]

Hi guys, its my first post.  Ive been collecting all the hardware for my cab for hte last 3 months.  Today I finally made my first cuts to the MDF.  

I plan on making my own overlay and sending it to a friend to print off at his print shop.  I have a quick question regarding photoshop.  Say for instance that your control panel is 38 * 18 inches.  Should I start a image in Photoshop and select a image size of 40*20 inches (for a little room for error and cutting).? Or does the image size have nothing to do with the print size?

I am going for one of those new-age "huge character faces" type SF3 CPO.  Thanks for the help guys.

[Darkstalker]

I would suggest working with a 38" x 18" image.  There's no real reason to go over unless you have really bad cutting skills, but I plan on taking my art to Kinkos and letting them deal with the printing/cutting headache.  If they screw it up, that's fine...They end up reprinting another one and cutting it again on them..heh

Seriously, if you go 40x20, you have to make a concious effort to not put anything in that space that's going to get trimmed, or scale the picture down, which doesn't always come out right on the fine details...Not to mention at 300 or 600 dpi, your adding a lot to the filesize as well...

As for the image size and print size, they are independant, but you normally print at 100% scale...

[hyiu]

I do go a little bit bigger... but not like 2 inch more....

I do more like 38.5 x 19.5 (in your case...) cos my wood cutting is sometimes off by a little bit.... 1/8 or so....
and I want my panel art to completely cover under the lexan....

but I think 2 inch is too much.....  (also... bigger usually means more expensive....) so... no need to go too much....