Have you ever taken a nice looking image from the internet only to find that it wasn’t so nice when you printed it? The image probably looked great on your screen, but when you printed it, it either printed at the size of a thumbnail or looked “blocky” or “pixilated”, right? This is because of image resolution. So, I want to share with you the difference between a good and bad image.
I want to make this as quick and painless as possible, so, without getting too technical, let’s start with resolution.
Resolution refers to the detail a digital image holds. The higher the resolution, the higher the image detail or better quality it has. You have probably also heard the term dpi. This stands for dots per inch or pixels per inch. A digital image is made up of pixels. The more pixels the image has, the higher dpi the image is. You can check your image’s resolution through most design programs such as Adobe Photoshop.
Bad: When a customer gives you their artwork, ask for a high-resolution image. You can’t go wrong with 300 dpi at the correct size. 300 dpi is the standard print size. Now this is where a lot of non-designers go wrong: if your customer gives you a digital image that is 4″ x 6″ and 300 dpi, but they want it printed at 8” x 12”, the image may come out looking distorted. This occurs because you cannot keep the image’s quality the same while increasing its size. You are actually decreasing its quality. In the example above, the customer wants to double the size of the image. If you do this, the image size will increase by 50%, but the dpi will decrease by 50%. So, the 8” x 12” image will only be 150 dpi. You cannot increase an image’s quality without decreasing its size.
Good: Here is a tip: if a customer brings you an actual hard copy of the photo, great! Since you need to get this image into your computer, you will have to scan it. This gives you the opportunity to increase its size without losing quality. When scanning, your scanner will have the option to choose the dpi that you want to scan the photo in at. 300 dpi will get the actual size of the image, 600 dpi will double the size and 1200 dpi will get you double that size, and so on. However, don’t try to be tricky and print an image from the internet, scan it in at a higher dpi, and expect it to look good when you increase the size…it won’t work.
Bad: If you are the one who finds images online to print – STOP! First, images should not be taken from the internet because of copyright issues. But, if you still intend to use an image you found on the internet, take a look at the size. Google even has a search option under their image tab that lets you select the size of the image you want to view – small, medium, or large sizes. Use this tool. In order to be able to print a photo as an 8” x 10” using the 300 dpi resolution, the image needs to be 2400 x 3000 pixels in size. Now that’s a lot of pixels! You see, images online usually have a smaller resolution than pictures that you want to print. This is because images with a lower resolution are also smaller in file size. Web designers want their online images to be small for faster loading speeds. So, images found online are usually compressed at around 72 dpi instead of the suggested 300 dpi for print. Just because the image looks good on your screen doesn’t mean it will look good when printed, especially if you are increasing the size. Sometimes there just simply isn’t enough detail or pixels in an internet image to print at a high output. Always try a test print before you make the item.
Good: Vector artwork is always the best to work with. Vector is artwork made up of line segments and points and will usually be found in file types such as .pdf, .eps, .ai and .cdr. Because a vector image is made up of lines and points, the size can easily be increased without losing quality. But be careful – just because it is a vector file type doesn’t mean everything in that file is vector. Vector design programs allow the designer to place images into the layout. Those images may be low-resolution images and not vector. Sometimes, depending on your design program, you can check this. Simply open up the file in a design program like Corel or Illustrator and click each piece. If you see actual lines outlining the piece, it is more than likely vector and can be resized with no problem. If there are no lines outlining it and only a square around the image, it was probably placed as an image file and is not sizeable.
To summarize: If your customer gives you their logo and it is very small on screen, you must insist on getting a larger image for best results. Now that you have a good understanding of resolution, requesting a higher quality image can turn into a nightmare. Remember when you knew nothing about resolution and dpi (a few minutes ago when you starting reading this blog)? Well, now your customers are in that same position, meaning they may not understand the importance of a high-resolution image.
I hope this blog gives you insight on some problems that you may have had and can help you find professional looking images.