Siloam Springs Printing Digital Hints

Consumer scanners have opened a world of possibilities for our customers, but it appears that a few hints are in order.

If you are scanning a photo for us to use in a publication, be sure to scan it at 300 dip (600 dpi maximum). If you know that the photo will be printed in black & white, you may scan it in the grayscale mode. This is not absolutely necessary because color photographs will reproduce because our final output is a black and white laser printer. The file size of grayscale pictures is much smaller, however, and if you are sending the photograph to us via email, this could be important.

Whether black and white or color, crop your scan to include the whole photograph using the scanner's software. Don't include a border around the picture because this merely increases the file size and may cause the software's automatic color correction to misread the photo.

Save the scan as a tiff (.tif) file. Our second choice for the file format would be Windows bitmap (.bmp). Both of these formats are uncompressed and all of the digital information is still there for us to use on your job. The Jpeg (.jpg) format can be used as long as the compression is specified at zero or minimum and the dots per inch (dpi) is at least 300. The Compuserve format (.gif) should be avoided, as should any of the more esoteric formats such as Targa and PNG.

Digital cameras have come a long way in the last five years. Almost any digital camera you can buy will take pictures that are fine for viewing on your computer monitor. But here we are concerned with reproducing those photos on a printing press. That's a "whole 'nother ball game."

You can take reproduction quality photographs provided that your camera is 3 megapixels or above. Do not plan on enlarging part of a 3 megapixel photo, however. Here's why:

For photos to be reproduction quality (we're talking resolution, not content, here), they must be at least 300 dot per inch at the size they are to be reproduced. A typical photo from a consumer range digital camera will produce a 5x7 inch photograph that looks just great when printed on an inkjet printer. The inkjet printer is using very small drops of ink to get that result, and the dots tend to spread out. Typically, these digital photos are 144 dpi, less than half the dpi we just said should be used for reproduction. These photos are acceptable because a 5x7 photo will rarely be used full size. Normally it will be reduced at least 50%. That doubles the dpi of the photo. Now we have 288 dpi, very close to the optimum.

But what happens when we only want to use part of the photo, say a person's head and shoulders, in our newsletter? Let's say, also, that in the photo, the whole person's figure is seen standing next to his/her car. When cropped, the resulting image is 1 inch wide by 1-1/4 inch tall, but it has to go into a spot that is 2 inches wide. This time, when we enlarge the photo 200%, we reduce the dpi by half, resulting in 72 dpi. In reality, depending on what is used to view the file, the pixels that create the picture will be increased or reduced in size, but the total number of pixels that make up the image do not change. If this cropped photo is enlarged and used in a publication, it looked jagged, digitized.

To avoid these problems try, to plan your photographs beforehand. Get as close to your subject matter as possible. Do your cropping before you snap the shutter. And use the maximum resolution your camera can produce.

Digital camera images contain a lot of information, sometimes too much. Practically every digital camera image can be improved by making some minor, easy to do adjustments using either the software that came with the camera or more powerful graphic editing programs. The simplest and most dramatic improvement can be made by simply increasing the contrast. Other options, such as sharpening the image (sometimes called using an unsharp mask for some unknown reason) and adjusting the brightness can also be beneficial.

When an image is printed on a press, ink is transferred from the plate to the paper. Depending on the balance of water to ink, the porosity of the paper and several other esoteric variables like the plate pressure, the dots of ink tend to spread out. This is called dot gain. Dot gain makes a picture appear darker, so to lighten a photo slightly (arbitrarily call it 3% to 5%) will improve the printed appearance of the photo.

After you have downloaded the photos from your camera to your computer and chosen the ones you want to use, please rename them to something that makes sense!

How to Rename Your Files

It helps to move the files from your camera to a place on your hardraive where you can later find them. Putting everything in My Documents will eventually get unmanageably huge.

If the file or folder you want to rename is not located in My Documents or its subfolders, use Search to find it. To open Search, click Start, and then click Search.

Click the file or folder you want to rename.

Under File and Folder Tasks, click Rename this file or Rename this folder.

Type the new name, and then press ENTER.

DIGITAL HINTS

SCANNING

DIGITAL CAMERAS

DIGITAL HINTS
CLICK THE LOGO ABOVE TO RETURN TO THE HOME PAGE.

SCANNING Consumer scanners have opened a world of possibilities for our customers, but it appears that a few hints are in order. If you are scanning a photo for us to use in a publication, be sure to scan it at 300 dip (600 dpi maximum). If you know that the photo will be printed in black & white, you may scan it in the grayscale mode. This is not absolutely necessary because color photographs will reproduce because our final output is a black and white laser printer. The file size of grayscale pictures is much smaller, however, and if you are sending the photograph to us via email, this could be important. Whether black and white or color, crop your scan to include the whole photograph using the scanner's software. Don't include a border around the picture because this merely increases the file size and may cause the software's automatic color correction to misread the photo. Save the scan as a tiff (.tif) file. Our second choice for the file format would be Windows bitmap (.bmp). Both of these formats are uncompressed and all of the digital information is still there for us to use on your job. The Jpeg (.jpg) format can be used as long as the compression is specified at zero or minimum and the dots per inch (dpi) is at least 300. The Compuserve format (.gif) should be avoided, as should any of the more esoteric formats such as Targa and PNG. DIGITAL CAMERAS Digital cameras have come a long way in the last five years. Almost any digital camera you can buy will take pictures that are fine for viewing on your computer monitor. But here we are concerned with reproducing those photos on a printing press. That's a "whole 'nother ball game." You can take reproduction quality photographs provided that your camera is 3 megapixels or above. Do not plan on enlarging part of a 3 megapixel photo, however. Here's why: For photos to be reproduction quality (we're talking resolution, not content, here), they must be at least 300 dot per inch at the size they are to be reproduced. A typical photo from a consumer range digital camera will produce a 5x7 inch photograph that looks just great when printed on an inkjet printer. The inkjet printer is using very small drops of ink to get that result, and the dots tend to spread out. Typically, these digital photos are 144 dpi, less than half the dpi we just said should be used for reproduction. These photos are acceptable because a 5x7 photo will rarely be used full size. Normally it will be reduced at least 50%. That doubles the dpi of the photo. Now we have 288 dpi, very close to the optimum. But what happens when we only want to use part of the photo, say a person's head and shoulders, in our newsletter? Let's say, also, that in the photo, the whole person's figure is seen standing next to his/her car. When cropped, the resulting image is 1 inch wide by 1-1/4 inch tall, but it has to go into a spot that is 2 inches wide. This time, when we enlarge the photo 200%, we reduce the dpi by half, resulting in 72 dpi. In reality, depending on what is used to view the file, the pixels that create the picture will be increased or reduced in size, but the total number of pixels that make up the image do not change. If this cropped photo is enlarged and used in a publication, it looked jagged, digitized. To avoid these problems try, to plan your photographs beforehand. Get as close to your subject matter as possible. Do your cropping before you snap the shutter. And use the maximum resolution your camera can produce. Digital camera images contain a lot of information, sometimes too much. Practically every digital camera image can be improved by making some minor, easy to do adjustments using either the software that came with the camera or more powerful graphic editing programs. The simplest and most dramatic improvement can be made by simply increasing the contrast. Other options, such as sharpening the image (sometimes called using an unsharp mask for some unknown reason) and adjusting the brightness can also be beneficial. When an image is printed on a press, ink is transferred from the plate to the paper. Depending on the balance of water to ink, the porosity of the paper and several other esoteric variables like the plate pressure, the dots of ink tend to spread out. This is called dot gain. Dot gain makes a picture appear darker, so to lighten a photo slightly (arbitrarily call it 3% to 5%) will improve the printed appearance of the photo. After you have downloaded the photos from your camera to your computer and chosen the ones you want to use, please rename them to something that makes sense! How to Rename Your Files It helps to move the files from your camera to a place on your hardraive where you can later find them. Putting everything in My Documents will eventually get unmanageably huge. If the file or folder you want to rename is not located in My Documents or its subfolders, use Search to find it. To open Search, click Start, and then click Search. Click the file or folder you want to rename. Under File and Folder Tasks, click Rename this file or Rename this folder. Type the new name, and then press ENTER.