Topic awaiting preservation: best resolution (Page 1 of 1)

I've done some reading on posts from way long ago, but still haven't found a specific answer to my question.

One of my instructors really harps on 300 dpi as what we need to work in for print items. No problem, except that the file size is then huge in Photoshop, and it really slows everything down. My computer at home has a 1.2 Mhz processor and 512 megs of RAM, and it still crawls whenever I try to work on something at 300 dpi, and sometimes Photoshop stops responding and I have to shut down. The computers at school are no better, except for the studio, which is hard to get into. So my questions are as follows:

Is 150 dpi normally good enough? These are items for my portfolio that I'm working on, which will mostly be printed out at Kinko's on glossy paper (I don't know anything about offset printing, but if you happen to know what is standard at good copy shops, that's probably what they are using). Some of them are poster size (24 x 36 inches), so they take up a whole lot of space.

If 150 dpi is not good enough, is there anything I can do to make Photoshop work better under these conditions? I know that without being able to put your hands on my computer that this is a difficult question to answer, but I do know that Photoshop used to perform much better using 300 dpi on this machine, and it no longer is.

The system stats you quoted should be more than enough, as long as you're working at some reasonable physical size (anything up to the size of a US Letter or A4 page should be doable at 300 dpi, although of course performance will drop off with size.)

You might just have a problem with what I call "computer hygiene." If you're using Windows, here are a few steps:

Look at your system tray. Do you have more than five or six programs in it? Crap like RealPlayer, instant messaging programs, or virus scanners can use up valuable resources. Try shutting down things you don't need.

Hit Ctrl-Alt-Delete and see what programs you have running. If there's stuff you don't recognize, consider nuking it to see what happens. If nothing crashes, you probably didn't need whatever it was. Woo!

Defragment your hard drive, just in case.

Try just randomly uninstalling things you don't need. You'd be amazed how programs can interact, seemingly randomly.

Reinstall Photoshop. If that doesn't work, reinstall Windows. If that doesn't work, reformat your entire hard drive and reinstall everything from scratch. If that doesn't work, cry.

If you're using a Mac, most of these suggestions still apply, but since you phrased your specs in terms of Ghz instead of by saying "I have a G4... it's one of the dark blue ones. They're better than the aqua ones, right? But not as good as the silver ones... wow, I wish my computer were a different color so it would go faster..." I'm going to assume you're using a PC.

Note to Mac users: I'm ribbing you. Even as a PC user, I'd love to have one of the famous Silver Bullets.

I think you're on to something with the sys tray! I'll give that a shot. I hadn't even considered that, but I don't really need virus scan running when I'm not even connected to the Internet, and I could stand to do a little housecleaning in there, anyway.

Yeah, I'm on a PC, using Windows. I hear you on the Mac colors. When they first started marketing the new, colorful Macs, I was pretty skeptical; transparent plastic in a rainbow assortment of colors is normally a good sign of bad technology. I don't know how many times I've said "if it looks like the target audience is a 13 year-old-girl, it's probably not very good" about various gadgets, including Macs, at that time. But in hindsight, um, yeah, they're really good computers. I'd take a G4 too, if they were giving them away.

But the eMacs still look like the perfect computer for a 13 year old girl.

Don't foget to run 'msconfig' - look at startup. Remove checkmarks from anything you don't need. Make note of any changes. Restore as needed.

If you have $$$ to spend and your aiming for PS performance you should aim for more RAM, as much as you can afford/fit in your PC and really fast hardisks will help as well.

Keeping your hard disks defraged will also help a lot. An A4 sized image @ 300 Dpi will chew up 512meg RAM in a snap so a nice clean and well oiled hard disk is a must. Cleaning up any background apps and the like will free up some RAM but even with 2.0 gig Photoshop will still page data to the hard drive after you've created a handfull of layers. Hell, I have 512 MB and I run dry when working on 800x600 72 Dpi images; although that's usualy after around 30 layers or so but that seems to happen quite often for me these days.

I have nearly the same system, and I have no problems runing all my work at 300dpi, The important thing is more ram or a faster HD for you scratch disks. I have a 20gig/ scsi that I use as a scratch disk only. But most newer Ide drives are now just as fast. It is Important to move your scratch disk off the same drive being used for your windows scratch disk. I would imagine that same goes for mac's.

Part of the problem my be the way you are working, are you doing everything in photoshop? If so I can see how adding multiple layers of images, type etc. could add up fast. Proper print workflow would have you brake the job down it job in to it's basic elements. That way you get flexablity when the client whats changes and reduce system demands. This Means image that can stand alone, stay alone, and are placed in position in the layout application, often using (OPI or proxy images), to reduce system demand. If you don't need to composite image don't. Vector element such as type and logos stay vector as RIPS generally print color image at 300dpi --> 600dpi and vector elements and grayscale images at 1200 -->2400 dpi.

I work mostly in two sizes when I don't have a specfic target size, 4x5 and 8X10, With my printers I found I can enlarged up to 150% with out an noticable quality hit at 150lpi.

I would think 150ppi would be fine for output at a Kinko's. In most cases they are running Xerox DocuColors if I rember correctly color image printed at max 600dpi. To find out the best resolution first we need to calulate the max lpi for the most shades of color, 600dpi / 8 = 75 lpi x 2 give you the best possiable print resolution = 150ppi. At 1200 dpi it would be 300dpi. That's where the value of 300dpi as a print standard come from, because early imagesetters output film at 1200 dpi, And the smallest print dot size at the resolution was 150lpi. The value 8 comes from the 8-bit matrix used to create the actual dot on the printer.

New imagesetters output at much high-hires now, but high-res images are not need unless you what to print at increased LPI. ie. (175 or 200). But printing higherend press equipment is required to run those jobs. The higher output device dpi simply mean it can reproduce more shades of colors at lower lpi.

LPI = lines per inch, a meaure of the dot size on a printer. Not the same at DPI, a measure of the elements that make-up a dot on the printer. High dpi the smaller the dot and the smaller the LPI possiable. Type and some vectors element generally reproduced at the actural DPI of the printer however which is way it should remain vector.

I think Steve just wrote a great explination of resolution on Guru photoshop forum, you may want to check it out.

jstuartj





[This message has been edited by jstuartj (edited 12-12-2002).]

jstuartj - you lost me a little bit but your post was great.

To the original poster - the short answer to your question: if these PS files are ones for your portfolio and are not going to be printed on an offset press, then 150dpi is probably fine. The magic figure of 300dpi for graphics is usually requested by commercial printers. Working at 150dpi will help with your computer speed, and there's nothing like doing a drefrag to clean things up.

Perfect Thunder - thanks for the giggle I got from this: "I have a G4... it's one of the dark blue ones. They're better than the aqua ones, right? But not as good as the silver ones... wow, I wish my computer were a different color so it would go faster..."

Thanks for all of your suggestions. I have found that working at 9.5 x 12 in 300 dpi doesn't put a big drag on my system (9.5 x 12 is the size of my physical portfolio) if I turn off all the stuff in the background. I have had occasion to do a couple of poster size images, and jstuartj touched on the problem with those; I really need to use Illustrator for posters (and I am trying really hard to learn it right now). Photoshop is simply not intended for poster size images.

Out of curiosity, does anyone here have a favorite instructional book for Illustrator?

I got MaxMem from analogx.com (it's free) and it is great for aggressively freeing up memory that hasn't been released from applications you've opened/closed but have not released memory back to your system. It's super easy to use and uninstalls in seconds if you don't care for it. There's a lot of other really cool tools on that site as well...check'm out!

I learned Illustrator quite painlessly with "Real-World Illustrator 7" by Deke McClelland (who also writes some really super Photoshop books) -- I'm certain that if you could find a "Real-World Illustrator (Your Version Here)" you'd be aces.

I also got some excellent tips and tricks from "Illustrator 9 f/x and Design" by Sherry London. Her book is meant for intermediate to advanced users, which means it picked up right at the skill level I'd gained from Deke's book and my own couple of years of intermittent practice.

Deke and Sherry, welcome to my shopping cart on Amazon.

Thanks for the suggestions!