Making Prop Money

Okay, one of my biggest pet peeves as a designer and as an audience member is prop money. I don't know if it is because it's just left to the last minute or proppers assume that the 30 foot rule will absolve them of all sins, but too many times I see prop money the wrong size, the wrong color, the wrong everything. And, yes, I'm likely a bit pickier than your average audience member, but you could have a numismatist sitting in the audience. (Yes, go look it up.)

The first thing to consider when setting out to make realistic prop bills is color and size. I find that the worst prop money I've seen on stage is often the wrong color, even American Bills have a specific kind of green. And European bills, while not always a known entity to your audience, have a certain look (often more colorful) and are bigger than we're used to (well, unless it is the Euro, then it's pretty much the same size).

The reason I am thinking about this is that I just finished a bundle of rubles for The Cherry Orchard and had to go in search of some images that would work for turn of the century Russian money. But Google-searching for an image of a Russian Ruble is not as easy as so many of my generation seem to think it is. As is with any image you want to print rather than see on your screen, you must must must pay attention to the size and resolution of the image. How many times have you taken a picture off the internet that seems big enough, only to print it out and it be the size of a postage stamp. Or all pixelated and ugly. That, my friends, is because of the resolution of the image. So, here are a few things to know and do when making prop money:

1. Get a hold of the real thing. Yes, if you can scan a real bill, you are in luck. Scan it with a high resolution (pixels per inch). At least 150 dpi, but if you can, go up to 300 dpi. This is the magic number that graphic designers for print like because it gives them enough pixels per inch to resize, but isn't so big that the computer freaks out about the file size.

2. If you don't have the actual bill, by all means, do an image search. But PAY ATTENTION TO THE SIZE of the image. Do this: Google image search "Russian Ruble." You will probably get this picture as your first result:



When you moused over it, more info should have popped up that told you what size the source image is. In this case "700 x 303" . That means that the image is 700 pixels by 303 pixels. Sounds pretty good (and if you follow the link and then right click "show image in new screen" you can see that it is a pretty good-sized image.) But, you are not out of the woods yet. If you copy the image into a photo-editing program, like Photoshop, you will have even more info to determine whether this image is worthwhile.

3. Once you save the image (right click>save as) open it in Photoshop. Go to Edit>Image size. Look at the info that is there. There will be a place where it tells you the resolution, at the bottom of the dialogue box.



The number in that box tells you how clear and crisp your picture will be when you print it. (Okay, little known fact to non-computer geeks and graphics people of the web: your computer monitor of non high-def fame will display beautiful, crisp images with a DPI as small as 72. And the lower your DPI, the smaller your file. So most web people [and programs that compress images for people who don't know what they are doing] save their images to be published on the web at 72 DPI. Do not let the pixels on the screen fool you.) Okay, so you now know that this image has a 72 DPI... is all lost? Not necessarily.

4. The next thing you need to worry about is the printable dimensions of your money. Look at the size of the image, which is just above your DPI in inches and a little further above in pixels.



Now, you need to know or decide what size your bills need to actually be. Because if your bills need to be 9" x 4", then you're going to have super pixelated bills on stage. But if you're making these for a performance where the nearest audience member is thirty feet away, that might be okay. However, if you want an image for your bill that isn't going to look like a weird Magic Eye puzzle, then you need to find a better image.

5. So, google images has come a long way in the last few years and now it allows you to sort through images by size as well as relevance. So if you go back to your original google image search of "Russian Ruble" you'll see on the left side options to choose size. Obviously, click on "Large" rather than "Any size" because Bigger is Better! In this case, I'm going to talk about the fourth image result:



Because it has a very important element that you may not have thought about when planning to make your prop money: The back of the bill. Yes, money is two sided. And yes, you should strive to have the matching artwork for the same bill on both sides of your prop bill. Obviously, you are not always so lucky, so you can fake it with two different bill images and some time spent in Photoshop, but let's assume you get as lucky as I did and get a large enough digital image of both sides of your bill. Hooray!

6. So, download it and open it in your image software and look at your image size. What do you see?




Yep, that's right, the resolution is 72 DPI. But what else do you see? The dimension of the image is 12"x12". I don't know about you, but a 12" long bill seems a little beyond the large scale of European bills. For whatever reason, when this image was created, it was compressed to 72 DPI, but the image dimensions blew up. This means if you printed it out on your printer, it would be bigger than sheet of paper but be pixelated. And this will work in your favor.

6. You can change the resolution of an image like this (where the actual dimensions are much larger than the dimensions you need but the resolution is too low). Do that. Type in 300 into the resolution box instead of 72. You'll notice that the pixel size changed (because you've told the computer that per square inch, you want to have 300 pixels, not 72... this is not hard math). But before you close the box, you also have to change your width dimension. In this case, I changed it to 7" because I feel like that will give me the right size bill (give or take some centimeters). Note: you only have to change either the height or the width dimension because Photoshop assumes that you want to proportionately scale your image, and so it links them and changes them as you like.



7. Okay, now that you've done this, you're ready to crop your images so that you will have two different documents, one with the front of your bill and one with the back. If you don't know how to do this, get Photoshop for Dummies. And now, all you have to do is create two identical-sized images in, one of the back and one of the front, that you can print back to back on a piece of paper. When you cut apart these two sides of the bill you can actually print two bills per page, so I ended up stacking my fronts and backs:



(PS. I changed the DPI for this image to 72 because otherwise it would have taken an hour to upload. So, don't try to cheat and use it.)

8. With two images, one front and one back, you just have to do one simple thing: print one side of the image in photo shop (don't worry about resizing the image or canvas to match your paper size because Photoshop is cool and will automatically center your image, and you want it to do that because when you print on the other side of the paper, your back image will be automatically centered). Once you print the first side, flip over, rotate, whatever it is you need to do with your printer to print on the backside so you get a double sided piece of prop money which, once you cut away the paper border, looks awesome.

A few final thoughts:

REPLACE YOUR INK CARTRIDGES! I worked on a production once where the American dollar bill used to create the bills on stage was printed with a printer that was running out of color ink. The bills looked teal. Check your colors, please. Especially when you're trying to duplicate American Money.

NULL AND VOID THE BILL! You can see on the example image I used it has a big ol' stamp that says "Speciman" and the web address of the company I pulled it from. The company that uploaded it did that so no one could try to counterfeit with it. If you come across an image (or you scan your own bill) that does not have a watermark on it, put something on it that, when the Feds look closely at your fake bills, won't lead anyone to think you were trying to get rich quick with your Canon printer and Google image search. I knew one prop designer who changed the blurb about the American bill being legal tender into a statement that said the "bill" was intended for theatrical use only. DO THIS! It saves your butt! Especially with American currency.




AGE YOUR MONEY! Have a big party while you're watching TV where you crumple up ever last bill that you've cut down and then uncrumpled them (unless you need crumpled bills) because, trust me, unless you have to have crisp bank bills (and I hope you don't because those are really hard to replicate) your crumpled and then uncrumpled bill will look so much more realistic (and it breaks down the paper you printed it on because, well, printer paper and the paper they print money on is different. Go figure.).




USE PARCHMENT PAPER! Go to the office supply store, go to the resume and nice paper section, buy a box of parchment paper. Trust me. The base paper of any bill around the world is not 92bright copy paper. It is usually fiber based and off-white. Save yourself the tea-staining headache and start with an off-white paper that already has some texture to it. Trust me.

Any questions? Let me know and I'd be happy to help.