300 dpi... jpeg is fine... bonus points for CMYK. You can effectively get away with 150-180 dpi. A 3000 * 2000 pixel picture at 300 dpi would be around 3.5" by 5". You can double that size if you use 180 dpi.

This all depends if it is printed or not. CMYK looks washed on out on screens and RGB always prints off.

If you're using a layout program, never stretch or condense your pictures more than 40% of the files original value. Save a copy and resize in photoshop.

If you're not using line drawings... a good trick is to bump the image up to the desired size... say 9" X 12" and make it quadruple the DPI (1200-1500). Then use a Gaussian blur at at a pressure/threshold level to only lightly blur some of the artifacts. Drop it down to the desire resolution (300) and then use unsharp mask on the three color layers and then again with different settings on the black layer.

Don't forget to convert all black and white images to greyscale!

Keep in mind that most mailboxes have a 5-10 megabyte limit! So I'd prepare a 100 dpi "web" version in RGB and a 200 dpi "print" version in CMYK.

If you're using a layout program... tiff or jpg or png won't really matter because distilling it to PDF converts all the image data to encapsulated post script anyways!

Nice post, Orochi.

I have a question: you said to resize the image in photoshop. is it not better to use illustrator to resize as illustrator is vector based? or is the effect essentially the same in photoshop and illustrator?

ONLY use Illustrator to resize Vectors. NEVER use Illustrator to resize images more than about ±10%. The problem with resizing in Illustrator at large scales is it significantly increases your file size. I learned that lesson first semester when I made a 30"x40" presentation board and the file was nearly 2GB. Once I resized the images on the board in Photoshop and replaced on the board, the file size dropped like 80%.

in illustrator... when you place a photo in the program, you're essentially placing the file within a bounding box.

When you stretch the bounding box, it just changes the the project of the linked file... but not the actual file.

There's a way to convert photos to pure vector forms... but that pretty much converts every pixel into a little vector square. So when you expand them... it just makes the pixels bigger with out the interpolation to make them smoother and more crisp.

If you're lucky enough to print at billboard sizes, I've known a few people who convert their images to half-toned images and then export the half tone dots to illustrator by creating vector lines from investing a selection mask. You can then use a transparency filter to get the necessarily overlaps and color.

investing=inverting*... like dots and lines said above... it creates massive files!

Although a billboard-sized .psd is much smaller than a vectorized billboard-sized .eps.

One of my ultimate goals in life is to save enough money to lease my own billboard for 6 months.

What do u mean? If I print the image of that size on a legal size paper, is it going to get blurred or blotched? What about pure black background? How does that work out? Thanks

At a resolution that high, it won't necessarily be blurred but it won't necessarily be sharp.

Really crisp sharp images are often the work of photoshop. You can take a 5 megapixel render and print it on legal-sized paper... and it will still look "soft."

Pure black backgrounds need to be configured in CMYK color.

If you have RGB (internet and most applications) black, it prints out at 80 percent saturation on your cyan, magenta, yellow and key (black or kodachrome or whatever you want to refer to it as). Black in RGB will result in colors running into each other, a wet sloppy page and the paper will become creased.

I wouldn't use legal sized paper. It is far too trick. Go for tabloid... it is proportional to letter sized paper. If I send someone a tabloid-sized PDF, they can accurate print it on a standard printer... albeit everything will be about 34% smaller (ie 12 pt type will look more like 8 pt type).

If you're not necessarily confident doing thing, I would suggest hiring a freelance graphic designer. As bad as the publication is going, you might get someone who does publication design to do it for about 120 dollars... that is if your portfolio is between 30-60 pages, single-sided and you have all of the images in a digital format.

I do work on people's portfolios all the time and this would take me about 4 hours and I charge 30 dollars an hour (I do not count the time of image and file processing).

unless you are printing in magazine a tiff is no necessary. for general purposes a jpeg is fine. 150 dpi will also be enough for most purposes.

my personal portfolio is all 150 dpi jpeg and psd file, illustrator files etc, all put together in in-design.

editors of magazines do tend to ask for 300 dpi tiffs, but again that is special case, so stay with jpegs and don't worry over it.

tiff - lossless compression

jpeg - lossy compression


those are the largest and most important differences. Each time you save a jpg, even at the highest quality setting, you are compressing the image. Since it is a lossy format.

tiffs do not lose data with their compression. But this is also why the files are significantly larger.


If you can keep track of the jpegs, then they are fine to use and you won't notice the quality degradation, but if you start resizing, saving again, and again, it will lose quality. Best things is to have a tiff archived, then use jpegs for sending to people or working with.


DPI - 300dpi is super high, as jump notes, is what magazines request (NOTE: many ask for 300dpi without requiring a pixel dimension, which pretty much means whoever sent the specs didn't know what to ask for, which is what I get all the time).

I've heard that Epson printers get their best quality at 260dpi, above is pointless. But I've never tested that.

I used to keep my print portfolio (printing on an Epson) at 150dpi, but recently upped that to 200-300dpi, just in case I want to resize something later on.


CMYK - your blues and purples get killed, absolutely mutilated!! I've spent countless hours trying to compensate after converting to CMYK.

My advice - don't convert unless you are sending to a printer. On your small inkjets, they convert everything at print and do a good job, no need to convert for self printing. CMYK sucks, imho.




Vector vs. bitmap - go read up on this, it will be very important when using Illustrator.

http://www.eastbywest.com/pub/vectorbitmap/

Vector - mathematically calculated lines which can be scaled with no loss of resolution or quality. Autocad is vector based, as is Illustrator.

Bitmap - pixel based information, so when you scale, you make the pixels much bigger, hence making it look like crap (there are programs and PS has the some scaling capabilities, but these just try to add more pixels). Photoshop is bitmap based, but has some rudimentary vector capabilities.

my camera automatically saves images in jpeg format. So all I have to do (in Mac) is to change the extension from jpg to tiff in order to convert the format? Is that correct?

you have to open the file in photoshop and save as to tiff format.

but seriously, just leave it as jpeg unless you are making major changes and saving, just as trace says.


we have files in tiff and raw format as backup but otherwise for our own dtp keep it all in jpegs. otherwise it is simply too unruly (sizewise).


you are right trace about the 300 dpi vs pixels thing. lately i have begun to ask editors how many pixels they want files to be and that makes things much easier.

So to sum everything up...

EDIT AND WORK IN TIFF

Output as JPG for printing


Correct me if I am wrong

if this is for school, just do a jpeg and leave it at that.

tiffs are heavy. my advice, if you don't need to use tiffs for high end printing just don't use them. converting from jpeg to tiff can be problem especially if you also switch to cmyk.

if it is a rendering or whatever then you will probabaly be doing lots of psd work later so save as psd and put together in in-design. this is what i usually do, generally keeping file sizes around A3 size at 300dpi. this makes it easy to shrink and save for magazines as they want and also is good size for presentations.

for photos i edit raw data and save as tiffs or jpegs. this is just easier for me. but then again i am not doing lots of changes because our photographer is professional and quite good usually.


but again, my office for whatever reason gets published in magazines about once every month or 2 so we need to have publish-ready images on hand. if you are just doing this for portfolio seriously don't bother. it is not worth the extra time and effort. keep it simple.

I've found that when I save/print my portfolio to pdf, my colors become considerably darker.

I'm skilled enough in photoshop and indesign to be dangerous, however inexperienced with formatting images in the various ways discussed above. What is the best method to lighten the colors to resolve this issue?

Thread revived by spam! :D

nice.

As for your pdfs.

It's your problem just when you view the pdf or does it print diffrent too? I'm willing to guess it has something to do with CMYK vs RGB displays

 

-natematt

I've noticed the issue both saving as a pdf and the printing from the pdf as well. I'm thinking about getting my portfolio for my m.arch application printed by blurb or lulu and I dont want to resolve this issue before I get to close to the deadline.

i like jpeg image format, here is a detailed introduction on different kinds of image formats, check out. i perfer to use jpeg for my camera image and then use some image converters to convert jpeg to other image formats. sounds like a good idea to you?