Picture Perfect Photos for Print and Web

Our world is visual. From the images you see on screens to the things you read every day, photographs play an important role in conveying emotion, illustrating a point, or explaining a concept. Photographs improve our comprehension and add to our enjoyment. Because of this, they are an integral part of printed material and web sites.

As camera technology has advanced, the quality of the photography we see every day has reached new levels. Couple that with the ease of using a digital camera, and we now see businesses and organizations becoming comfortable with handling their photographic image needs without the services of a professional photographer.

Our job is to reproduce those photographs in printed brochures, sell sheets, marketing material, newsletters, direct mail pieces, signs and banners, and even business cards. Since we want the photographs to reproduce in the best possible quality, we’re offering some technical tips on the characteristics of digital photo files to use for printing and web applications. These aren’t tips on how to take photographs, but rather what to do once the image is captured and you’re ready to submit the photo file to us.

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File Format Fundamentals

Graphic images – such as photographs, illustrations, drawings, logos, and clip art – are a great addition to any printed piece. When combined with text, images measurably increase reader comprehension, retention, and interest when compared to text only.

In printing and publishing, graphic images are two-dimensional (2D), while on the web images can be two- or three-dimensional (3D) or multimedia.

There are two ways to form graphic images: pixel by pixel in a grid (called a bitmap or raster image) or mathematically from geometric objects such as points, lines, curves, and polygons (called vector images). Digital photographs and all images that have been scanned are bitmap images; vector images originate primarily from illustrations or drawing software programs or from plotters used in technical drawing.

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Bitmap or Vector Image…Which Do You Choose?

Graphic images – such as photographs, illustrations, drawings, logos, and clip art – are a great addition to any printed piece. When combined with text, images measurably increase reader comprehension, retention, and interest when compared to text only.

In printing and publishing, graphic images are two-dimensional (2D), while on the World Wide Web, images can be two- or three-dimensional (3D) or multimedia.

There are two ways to form graphic images: pixel by pixel in a grid (called a bitmap or raster image) or mathematically from geometric objects such as points, lines, curves, and polygons (called vector images). Digital photographs and all images that have been scanned are bitmap images; vector images originate primarily from illustration or drawing software programs or from plotters used in technical drawing.

Examples of bitmap file formats are Tagged Image File Format (TIF); Joint Photographic Experts Group (JPG or JPEG); Graphics Interchange Format (GIF), Adobe Photoshop (PSD); bitmap (BPM); Windows Paint (PCX); and pixel image format for Macintosh (PICT). Photo editing or image editing software such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Paint Shop Pro or Microsoft Paint all work on bitmap files.

Examples of vector file formats are Encapsulated Postscript (EPS); Adobe Illustrator (AI); and CorelDRAW (CDR). Popular vector drawing software includes Adobe Illustrator, CorelDRAW, and Macromedia Freehand.

http://macgra.com/0606Printips.pdf

Let Me Illustrate My Point: Choosing and Using Clip Art

Think back to the last time you bought something that needed assembly. Likely the instructions included drawings or illustrations to help you understand what the words were saying. In fact, the drawings may have been all you needed to complete the assembly. This is the power of illustrations that accompany what we read. Our comprehension rises dramatically when we also have something to look at.

When designing a brochure or flyer for your company, or when creating a newsletter, you can use this fact to your advantage by including clip art within the body of the copy. In graphic design, the term clip art refers to a broad category of non-photographic images that can be used to illustrate text. The name comes from the way images originally were packaged – bound in a book from which users could cut out (or clip) artwork to place in layouts. When desktop publishing replaced manual layout, users stopped clipping and began scanning the images. Now clip art books have been replaced by digital compilations available on CDs or even downloaded from web sites.

http://macgra.com/0401Printips.pdf