Preserved Topic: Print vs. web format (Page 1 of 1)

I haven?t used PS for anything else beside for web images, so excuse me if this is a silly question.

I am trying to develop a print advertisement and want to use PS to create a simple graphic. The publication it is scheduled to run in agreed to take care of all the necessary formatting- all they need is a .gif or .jpg.

Question: How do I "save as" in order for the graphic to be used for print? I assume I change the resolution from 72 to something higher. . . .but that is just a guess. Also, ae there any other things I should do to design for print?

Thanks

Steve might be the best man to talk about this, but I'll see if I can swing a bit of advice.

Firstly your resolution (which you need to set from the beginning of the graphic, not as an after thought when it's finished). The rule of thumb is mostly 300 - 600 dpi, or ppi for print. I prefer working in as high a res as is reasonable, just for crisp prints.

Secondly, when you're setting your new document size, ignore the old "pixels" and set the "inches" or "cm" sizing. You want your working graphic to be the exact measurable size as what you want it printed out as. If it needs to be 12" x 12" on a T-shirt, then it had better be 12" x 12" at 300 or higher ppi when you create it.

And the last two little pieces of advice can get crammed together. If the print shop is going to print right from your graphic, try to create it in CMYK mode, instead of RGB. Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black are the four ink separation colours of printing, opposed to the Red, Green, Blue colours of light. If you design in RGB to be printed out, chances are, you'll see different end result colours once it's printed. Also, if it's going to be a logo, or a graphic that needs to be deadly crisp, or resized at any point for reuse, I always consider making a vector (Illustrator, Freehand, Corel Draw) format graphic instead of a raster in PS, due to lossless resizing with bezier curves.

Okay, for my tired brain, that's all I've got right now.

Hope it helps a bit at least.

Peter



ICQ:# 10237808

I am no expert, but also consider your file size.. not sure if your gonna have to tranfer the finished graphic to the source for printing, so be prepared for a possible large file size (depending on how high a ppi you choose and the dimensions of the graphic).

You may consider also using a .tiff format as well as a .jpg.. I don't think .gif would support CMYK.. not 100% positive, but I think .tiff preserves more of your quality...

so my contribution is mainly file size.. would be orrible to do a great graphic and then find out you can't get it to the printer without compressing the hell out of it!

for what its worth...

~Vp~

i've been playing a lot with print graphics lately... 10x8" stuff at 300dpi. dg and vogon pretty much covered it all... jpg/sif format is kind of funk though, try to see if they'll use a copy of the graphic in tiff or psd format...

cheers.mikey.milker

Gotta go with vogon on this....though to be honest, if you're quite serious about print, either look at a ZIP drive, or my two favourite words. CD Burner

Okay fine....an acronym, and a word.....picky bas***ds <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/wink.gif">


Peter...again



ICQ:# 10237808

I thought I'd pitch in my few cents on this issue. I design quite a bit of graphics for print.

I generally work with images that are 9.25"x11.25" at 300dpi. On a 20" monitor running 1280x1024 I generally work with the image at a size of 25% of the original size. This size file will generate a .PSD that is larger that 50mb before you even begin to add graphics. I've found through experience that this size file works the best for print. I have the luxury of being able to send my graphics out to be printed by a company that uses a Light Jet 5000 color laser printer that is capable of printing millions of colors in RGB. Surpisingly, this is relatively inexpensive in comparison to high end offset CMYK printing due to the fact that you generally have to print thousands in offset in order to get a good deal on price.

I wouldn't ever send a jpg or gif to a printer and expect high quality. Your best bet is to send tiff/PSD/ or even AI. Jpg and gif images are two compressed and pixelated for print. They should primarily be used for web graphics due to their small file size.

Your best bet is to shop around for a print shop. When you find the print shop that you like talk to the press operators and find out a little about their printing capabilities. This will help you determine the best way to set up your image before you design your graphics.

Also don't enlarge web graphics (72dpi) to use on your 300dpi images because they get super grainy and ugly compared to the crisp tight graphics you create from scratch in Photoshop. You may also want to layout your text in Illustrator or 3D Studio Max2 and place them into your image. This will make for tight crisp text when it goes to print. Also, in 3D Studio Max2 if you create some 3D text and save it as a tiff it creates a channel that makes it incredibly easy to make your text selection and insert it into your image.

I can't think of any other highly important print related items right now. Let me know if this helps!


[This message has been edited by Boudga (edited 22-09-2000).]

darn it DG !!!!!! you picked on yourself before I could even have a go! LOL.. has to be a 'compact disc' recorder all the way I am afraid ! (looks @ himself.. hmmm scary) ..

boudga is correct in saying skip the jpgs and gifs... way to much compresion going on..

if your files sizes are getting up into the 50megs size.. be prepared for a worl slow down.. (unless of course you have ram coming outta ya ears) <img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/redface.gif">

(what is this dribble I am going on about?)

..time for lunch

~Vp~

Ok- thanks everyone for their input. Really big help! I don't know how I got into this. I have designed for the web, but print? whoa! worlds apart. I took this job in the QA dept. I had to tell my boss about my photoshop experience. . .

When I finish the graphical work for print it usually takes me about 5 to 10 minutes average to save an image that is 9.25"x11.25" @ 300dpi on a PC running dual 333mhz pentium II's, 256mb ram, 32mb video ram, 10000 rpm scsi HDD.

- "everytime I saw the filth on the street it began to look more beautiful to me..., evertime I touched the unclean thing..., it felt more an more like I was touching me... THAT'S WHY THEY CALL ME FORNICATOR!!!" - Rorschach Test

*gasps* nice machine Boudga !!!! its the stuff dreams are made of!!

*looks envious* o O (someday.... sigh)

Uh, thought i would throw something out people didn't really point out before.

Bleeds/Margins:
You should figure out your margins ahead of time, unless you want to pay extra for a bleed. If you get something offset print depending on where you go you can expect margins of .2 inches to really big, like .5 inches, at least this has been my experience with local print shops. My textronix printer has a margin of hrm, .2 for top and bottom, .15 for sides. If you want to print full page stuff, you need to create artwork that extends past the edges of the page for the bleed.

General advice:
Figure out who prints for your company and go talk to them, unless they are assholes they should be more then happy to tell you exactly how to setup your files and sizes(printers like it when people set stuff up properly). Print shops will always take .tiffs and .psds, but might be picky about what kind of postscript files they want. Another thing to think about if you do vector is to have fonts on disk or available.

Color Space(like outerspace, but prettier):
Uh, don't forget to calibrate your monitor/printer setup, you can get different colors as you move from digital to print, especially if you have to change color spaces, like if you create in RGB then have to print in CYMK and you don't convert and correct beforehand you will be greatly dissapointed in the brightness and intensity of you work. For some help figuring out what works in CMYK go to view, and click on the gamut warning(command-shift-y on a mac), everything that turns gray doesn't exist in CMYK, select one of those colors, then click on the little fore/background color boxes(dont' have any idea what those are called) to bring up the color picker, notice the little warning triangle with a slightly different color on it? Thats the closest color available in CYMK, the color with the little box above it is the closest 216 web color. Also in the view menu is a preview sub-menu, the CYMK option will preview your image in CYMK, you can edit and do whatever still in RGB, nice feature. If you already knew this stuff, sorry to waste your time.

<img border=0 align=absmiddle src="http://www.ozones.com/forum/frown.gif">

Uh, paragraphs are for wussies, and printing is for people who hate trees.


[This message has been edited by OpticBurn (edited 23-09-2000).]

Oh man - you take a day off, you miss all the fun. Went to some loser's 46th birthday, missed all this excitement.

Print production is an extremely non-trivial pursuit. A sophisticated means of self-destruction.A source of heated, passionate opinion that rivals or surpasses politics or religion. Beyond the very helpful advice stated above, I have nothing simple to offer.

4-color printing is just the ugliest offspring of the union of technology, craft and black magic. Don't ask me how three parents got involved, but it's true.

Oh yeah - and it's wicked fun too.

If this is a one time thing, take the excellent advice offered above of communicating SPECIFICS with the printer, and be sure to budget time and money for a proof - FROM the PRINTER - not your little desktop thingy which the printer's oily account rep will be happy to take and the pressman will laugh an evil laugh at. (sfx: Bwahahahahahaha)

Assuming you design in RGB, the safe RGB setting (in Preferences>Color Settings) is Colormatch (not sRGB, the web design standard). If you can submit RGB, great; if it has to be CMYK, then when you ask advice, ask what to set dot gain at. (And be sure to tell 'em if you work in PS 5.x or some earlier version - Adobe changed what dot gain means in version 5). (Dot Gain attempts to counteract the darkening of an image due to the paper's tendancy to absorb ink. Cheap papers absorb more, and thus require highter dot gain settings than do better, coated papers.)

And if this is NOT a one time thing, but something you are going to be growing into, the best resource I've come across in print (and in person if you can afford his class) is Dan Margulis and his book "Professional Photoshop".

One last comment. As a photographer, I was accustomed to working with talented and committed photo lab people and custom printers, whose job it is to look at, evaluate and interpret a color negative when printing.

Imagine my shock when I sent my first paying digital job off to a printer and had to pay extra money for more proofs because the first was too dark. "Don't you guys even look at this stuff" was my initial reaction, and "uh, no - why should we?" was the crux of the answer. Bottom line - whatever you send, they are gonna assume it's what you want.

Scared off yet? Hope not. As fun as web design is, there's not much more satisfying that being able to pick up and hold what you're done. Getting a piece back from the printer is just a blast. There's major angst too, but I love the process. You just wouldn't believe the technology involved in gettin ink onto paper these days. It is awesome.

What resolution you need depend also on what the print is for. The rule of thumb is to use 1,5-2 times what the lpi it is printed in. For a newspaper 170 is usually enough, while for magazines you should use at least 300 dpi. As for format, that is also depending on the form of printing, a highest-quality jpg is usually enought for a newspaper add, but it is better to use eps or tif for a lossless picture. If you use tif, make sure to save it for mac/pc depending on what the printshop uses.

Colours are more tricky. As already mentioned, most important is that you have your screen calibrated the right way. The colourspace you use should preferrably be ColourMatchRGB (as already mentioned) or AdobeRGB, since these are somewhat a standard in the business. But as long as the space you are using is not too limiting (like sRGB) it really doesn't matter that much what you use since that is embedded in the picture. If your printshop is fairly "modern" they will be using ICC profiles. If you are very picky about your colours and want to be sure to get it exactly like you want, then you can ask the printshop to get the ICC-profile for their press (since it is in their interest to have happy customer, there is really no reason why they would not send this to you) When you have installed that (under CMYK-setup in "colour preferences) you can use the ctrl-Y command to see exactly what your graphic will look like on their particular press. You will then deliver the picture in RGB, and the translation to CMYK will be done in an optimal way at the printstore.

One more thing that many people seem to forget about...It is not enough to calibrate your monitor, but you also need to use the right light surronding your workstation. A sort of standard in the printing industry is 5000K and a CRI(?) of at least 95.

Oh dear... This is my first post to this forum, and it is such a boring one with nothing even remotely creative in it... I am usually not *this* boring though (I hope)
This is probably the best forum I have been to though, and I have already learned things only reading it for a few days.

zox, welcome to the forum. i would just like to add another reference that i have found extremely helpful as an all-around guide to professional photoshop work: Real World Photoshop 5. The book takes you through every aspect of "normal" work in photoshop, so while it doesn't tell you how to get that flashy special effect, it does tell you how to get the perfect color and how to do effective masking. there is an entire chapter devoted to color calibration with a good helping of theory thrown in.

did i just start to ramble?

Yup !!!! but nought wrong with that... rambling is a good way to see the countryside....