Designing Images for Printing

Solja · Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2004 12:24 am Post subject: Designing Images for Printing

Hello everyone,

I am glad to have found these forums (found through phpBB forums) because I am not really new to PS, just not as good as I'd like to be at it.

My question is... I design fliers for promoters, bands, etc., and I have ran into the problem where - once I design the flier, and the client likes it, they take the image to the printer and he says that it can't be printed because the resolution is too low. I generally start with file - new, then ok. I then open the background image (that I found through a search on the net or from a photo that I personally took with my dig. camera) and drag it to the "new" layer. Yadda.. yadda... walah! A new image that is "supposedly" 300 dpi. I even had a client open his own PS and look at the dpi and it also said 300 dpi. However, once it got to the printer, it was less. Cry

This is not only bad for business but it is very frustrating as I don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Can someone answer this question for me? I think that once the client views it, and I email it, he wants to see it "better", and requests that I "shrink" it some so that he can see it before he takes it to the printer. Is this the cause or am I really doing something wrong?

Thanks for any & all suggestions/help that I receive.

White Warlock · Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2004 6:22 am Post subject:

Despite your mentioning you are not an amatuer, i'm going to post without making any assumptions of knowledge:

Offset printing aims for about 150dpi. Aiming for 200dpi print base is minimum comfort zone, with 300dpi giving leeway for those Beavises that opt to stretch your graphic on their pages.

The default is 72dpi. That means the graphics, when parked for prepress printing, will shrink to about one-third their size. This will force Beavises to stretch it... making each pixel 'three times its size.' The end result is a 'blurry' graphic.

Under Image-Image Size-Document Size, pixels/inch = dpi. For print, you should ignore Pixel Dimensions section. To account for the Beavises, you need to set the resolution to 300 pixels/inch. In Document Size, set the width and height to equal the print size the object is supposed to be.

A general recommend is to give a 1/4 inch leeway on all sides when determining width/height. This really doesn't have to do with the print area, as it has to do with some of the printers that insist upon having the graphic 'fit' within their preset margins (annoying, to say the least).

Another recommend, if cutting is to occur, is to provide at least a 1/8 inch gap on every side of your graphic piece (such as business cards). Failing to do this will result in a lot of 'nipped' graphics.

TIFF, EPS, or PSD (prepress setting) are the ways to go if you wish to present a graphic piece to a printshop, especially when it must eventually end up in the presses of an offset printer. I prefer TIFF, with LZW compression. Places like Kinkos convert these into PSDs, but providing them a PSD isn't going to help them any. Their policy, and the policy of many other print places, is to do their own conversions and not rely on the customer's.

JPG, as you know, sucks for print. JPG is lossy compression, which means in print, artifacts will result.

If i didn't answer your question, maybe you can park an example here or email an example to me at white_warlock@hotmail.com and i can try to figure out what's going wrong. I would prefer you park it here, so we can share our findings with the rest of the board frequenters.

Solja · Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2004 11:19 am Post subject:

Hi White Warlock, and thanks for responding to my question. I don't think that you answered my question because I set the dpi in "edit/image/size" and the document size to 4"x6". The printer doesn't ask for the sides to have that 1/4 inch leeway, but they all insist on 300dpi, which I aim for.

Thanks for helping me out. Brow

Solja · Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2004 11:28 am Post subject:

I tried to attach the .psd file but this board wouldn't accept it. I assume that the file is too big.

Here are the images on the net though, front & back, respectively. I don't know if this will tell you anything though.

Solja · Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2004 5:12 pm Post subject:

Anybody?

White Warlock · Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2004 9:40 pm Post subject:

are these the files the client receives when he goes to print?

Solja · Posted: Mon Jun 21, 2004 9:52 pm Post subject:

No. I sent him the large version of it found here. http://www.soldierette.com/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=fliers by clicking through to the biggest sized image. It's the 2nd row, first image.

White Warlock · Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2004 1:46 am Post subject:

Well, besides that one being a jpg, which sucks to give for print, it's defaulting to a 72dpi, but the inches are proportional, so if i correct the dpi to 300, it reverts to the appropriate size.

What am i saying? The print place they're going to sucks, because they shouldn't have had a problem. One thing i do sometimes is i give the graphic piece at double the size needed. That gives the Beavises some room to work with the artpiece.

One consideration. It may be that they want multiple copies on a single sheet, but really... this is something they should be able to handle on their own. I'm seriously thinking the customer is taking it to a printshop that offers a great price, but hires Beavises to do the work. One of the worst things i ever encountered, was an offset printshop that hired Kinko's quality employees. I.e., utter n00bs.

Solja · Posted: Tue Jun 22, 2004 1:57 am Post subject:

Yes, I'd prefer them to have the actual .psd, but they all (in this area anyway, which is Wash, DC) ask for the image in .jpg format.

I don't know who their printer is, but the fliers are cheap, ie, $200 for 5,000 4x6 fliers, which is a good rate for these parts. I guess because of their pricing, they do not do ANY editing of the image. They offer next-day service, and will not even let the customer know when something is wrong... until it's time for them to pick it up.

So... from what you are saying, I designed it right and by reducing it in size, the dpi changed to 72 dpi?

beley · Posted: Fri Jun 25, 2004 10:25 pm Post subject:

Well for print you need a lot more than 300 DPI on an image like that. Newspapers are about 150 but an offset press will print more than 2400 DPI. I save color files at 1200 and grayscale at 600 DPI. The printer can always reduce or export to his platemaker/RIP at any lower resolution, he just can't increase.

If you design at 1200 DPI your file size will be astronomical but then at least they can work with it.

And abou JPG... it is a compressed lossy file format, meaning it loses much of the image data on purpose to reduce file size. TIFF or PDF are good for printing.

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