if youre printing on nice glossy paper, sure, it does make a difference. however, the difference is probably commonly overstated as 150 looks quite good on quality paper too. you probably know by now that the perceived difference between 72 and 150 is much greater than between 150 and 300. my advice would be to shoot for 300 though. computers are only getting faster and better with storage. a 20-50mb file wont mean much soon (it barely does now). this is your portfolio so it seems like a good place not to cut corners.

to eye-ball it at 300dpi will be fine. 600dpi maximum resolution for crispness. Your file size seems a bit big but that maybe due to the paper size which you haven't stated.

PSD files with layers will get very large, try using Tiff format with compression. Avoid JPEG as the compression will result in atifacts (fuzzy blurring between different colour changes).

The images were all tiffs but they are currently PSD files because I've had problems with the printers not be able to print tiff files for whatever reason. I've been before and they had to convert all the files on the disc which I really don't trust them to do on my final prints. The good thing is that I always get at least one free copy since they always seem to print somthing wrong. The page sizes are 8x11 and I'm not leaving a border. Is there a way to do this without printing on larger paper and them trimming it down?

Any idea why they couldn't print Tiff's I've never heard of that. I've never tried to print full bleed to the edges so I not sure about that. Those image file sound about right mine are around 50-70, just upgraded my memory so saving isn't to much of a hassel anymore. Good luck

Make them Targas, if you can't get Tiffs to work, it's a lossless format as well. PSDs will slow the entire process down, just because of their file sizes.

I'd aim for the best you that you have patience for. For most of my personal stuff that I know I won't be printing large, I go for about 200. 150 is generally fine, but with 200 you can go a little larger if you have to.
I've never known anyone that can see the difference between 200 and 300. Anything higher than 300 is like National Geography printing quality, that none of us have the means or requirments to justify (ie it'd have to be such special printing and paper to have any difference).

Do the 300, if you already have it setup that way. Just flatten the PSDs and make tgas out of them and that should reduce your size by 60% or so. Make sure you keep the PSDs, though.

How much are you spending on printing? I'd really think about doing it yourself. You'll only need a few of them, and the best ink jets are easily as good as anything but the most expensive printing at a shop (which, by the way, will not help get you into a better school).
Experiment with different papars, I'd suggest semi gloss photo paper to start with.

Not sure of you printing cost but it would be cheaper if you figured out how to print a full bleed on 8x11, I wish I knew how but oh well. Just curious are you also printing double sided images? Can this be done easily on a home printer, anyone? I know you can flip the paper over and run it through but I haven't had much quality success with that.

yeah.. there are printers printing with no border... ask them if they have.

you did your portfollio in photoshop? ouch. bad idea to start.

printing .tif files or any image file directly - also a bad idea.

I used to hate it when people would tie up the print shop for half an hour printing 600 MBs of PSDs when a 3MB pdf would have printed in seconds an looked better.

if you have the finished images and don't want to bother doing things properly in a page layout program, find a computer with acrobat pro to compile all the images into a multi-page PDF. then the printshop will hate you slightly less.

manamana, why is making a portfolio in Photoshop a bad idea??? i like Photoshop much more than illustrator or indesign since it is just so stable and so intuitive. and its totally 'what you see is what you get'

I would also recommend coverting into tga or tiff. I have to say that I regularly print 24x36 size full-color drawings on our hp plotter, and i see absolutely no differnce when i print from psd or jpeg. The colors vary very slightly, but that happens only sometimes. But one has to be sure to convert it to a jpeg with '12' quality.

sameolddoctor,

"The colors vary very slightly" is not "absolutely no differnce". Setting a jpeg to 12 is like asking for only the finest baked beans.

Nothing beats a Tiff or Psd or any other format that is bitmap based -- that is any format that doesn't use a compression which alters the information of the individual pixel.

sameol - PSDs, Targas and Tiffs are 'lossless', so you can compress them without losing quality (a compressed Tiff should be less size than a jpeg at 12). Once you make it a jpeg, you will be compressing it, even if it's at 12. Then each time you save it again, you lose more data. No problem if you don't do that and aren't relaly picky, but if you want the best res images while still being able to open and close them and maybe resize them occasionally, then stick with tgas and tiffs.

I prefer to use the other programs because you can link the images, making the files tiny and easy to open/save and add/subtract things like text. Also, the Illustrator and InDesign maintain vector files, so you can print and get that crisp edges. PS will rasterize the vector files, losing quality and increasing file size.

It's all about speed and flexibility, really. They'll also allow you to save out as a PDF that maintains the vectors, PS can't do that.

SOD:

1)photoshop can't handle vectors, meaning if you put a drawing in photoshop, it gets jaggies on any non-orthogonal lines from the rasterization. you can render this basically unnoticable by using high resolutions, but that's generally a bad idea because of the insane resolutions needed, which results in filesizes that are just plain stoopid.

2) text has the same problem. if you maintain it as text, and not as pixels, quality noticably improves - it's sharper and easier to read. indesign also has extensive text formatting tools PS can't touch.

3) insane file sizes. say you have a page layout that has a diagram in one corner, and an image at the top. in photoshotop all the whitespace is in between is filled with white pixels...which needlessly inflates file sizes (and the time to send the file to the printer, the time for the printer to rip the file...). in indesign that whitespace takes up NO space.

4) each layout adjustment (transformation) degrades image quality.
say you start with a 300 dpi scan, and decide you want it small on the page. you scale it down, and apply the transformation. you just threw out all the extra data you'd need if later you decide you want it bigger. in indesign, all your original files are linked. resize all you want, the original image is never touched untill you export or print, and then only for what's exported or printed. all edits in indesign are lossless, now and forever.

5) indesign is wysiwyg too if you can find the w key and the right mouse button. indesign is made for fast, professional print production and in that capacity it's way better than photoshop. Prepare your raster images in photoshop, prepare your vector images in cad and/or illustrator, and compile, layout, then generate clean pdfs from indesign. that's how it's designed to work and fighting that is needless trouble.

6) photoshop can't handle multiple pages. this alone is nightmareish enough to not bother with it, but rather than take half a day to learn indesign, people still think they'll save time just using photoshop. they won't, not in the long run. make a pdf from indesign, and you have a single, efficient multipage file that prints quickly and without hassel.

my 40 page portfollio is a 28MB pdf with mostly 300 dpi images and flawless vectors. do that in photoshop and you have my respect, sir.

manamana,

"to each his/her own"

i, for one have a superfast computer (thanks to my boss) and a huge amount of hard drive space, so i really do not care about file sizes, unless they are insanely huge.

dont want to seem like a photoshop pimp, like you advertise yourself as an indesign pimp, but well, i have known many professional graphic designers use Photoshop for everything from single posters to multiple page books, so i guess it cannot be that bad.

"Prepare your raster images in photoshop, prepare your vector images in cad and/or illustrator, and compile, layout, then generate clean pdfs from indesign."

this sums up the entire thread.

For borderless printing on letter-size paper, I've been using an Epson Photo R200 inkjet printer, and I've generally been very pleased with it. IIRC, it cost me less than $150 a year ago.

My entire portfolio is done in AutoCAD, with raster images attached and cropped as necessary. With the right pen table settings and knowing how to manipulate the display order, I've been able to get some nice results.

SOD

sorry, I have alot of pent up anger left over from school - I wasted many a hour standing in line at the printshop waiting for somebody to print their 10 bloated psds so I could print my stuff.

my apologies.

-I have seen people use PS for stuff better suited to indesign, if that's what they're used to and/or doing things on the cheap. (they only bought photoshop and not the whole suite)

also, a fast computer and big hard drives won't help a printer rip oversized files any faster

i was told by a printing company geek that for most non-professional printers (which is what most of us use) the printer can't do more than 150 dpi so if you do 300 the printer will have to run it through a filter. In a non-rational way i don't really trust this, but i suspect it is true.


btw, in-design makes photoshop much easier to use and vice versa...

most professional printers will print at 300dpi. 400dpi for art books.