Saving I.F. images at 300dpi for Postcards

j Paul

PFG, Picture Framing God
Joined
Feb 23, 2004
Posts
7,299
Loc
Toledo,Ohio
I had sent a PM to Steve with the following question, he suggested I post it here as the answer might benefit all.
CGF II, Certified Grumbler II
Member # 3933 posted 02-21-2006 01:39 PM
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Steve, Have a question regarding saving design that we create in I.F. to use on a postcard advertising that we have I.F.
My printer says they need to be 300dpi, seems we can only save to 150dpi. My designer called the tech support at Wizard and said only 150dpi is possible. Thought if their was a way you would know how.
The examples of the flowers that Wizard send my designer were 300dpi, but we would like to use something that we create.
Thanks John barlowe aka jPaul

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Thank you Steve for the quick respons, forwarded it to my design person/ also printer

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Posts: 332 | From: Toledo,Ohio | Registered: Feb 2004

WizSteve
CGF II, Certified Grumbler II
Member # 136 posted 02-22-2006 12:24 AM
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hmm.. not sure who you spoke to at Wizard, but technically that's not correct. The DPI is more constrained by the overall size of the image in pixels and the target size you're printing to.

For example, my Canon S2 takes pictures that are 2600 pixels wide by 1950 pixels tall. If I were to print that out to be an 10 by 8 photo, it would end up being about 260 DPI: 2600 pixels / 10 inch es = 260 pixels per inch. Say I printed the same picture out at 7x5, it would be about 371-ish DPI. Same amount of data, but printed in less space. Make sense?

Now, screen shots are fixed at the resolution of your screen. So if you're running at 1024x768, printing a 10x8 image would only be about 100 DPI and change. But an image on a postcard is only like 4 inches wide, which would give you 256 DPI, 2.5 times the resolution (same data, smaller space). If you needed more, you could either bump up the screen resolution if your video card and monitor can handle it (i.e. 1280x1024), or you can take the image into Photoshop and have it's fancy software tools increase the resolution in a "nice" way (scaling up is never as good as scaling down, but Photoshop does a good job of cleaning it up). That's how we do all our Wizard ads from screenshots...

And when the printer says it needs to be 300 DPI, that's only a general rule not an absolute requirement. 300 DPI images simply look nicer since obviously there's more dots per inch, and so by telling you that they "need" 300 just means that you'll get a consistant quality by setting your standards at that level.

Yeah, that's a mouthful. Hope that helps..

(probably wouldn't hurt to post this advise as well in a forum)

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Steve Kerr
Lead Programmer - Wizard International
steve.kerr@wizardint.com
Framer - Finishing Touches, Mill Creek WA
 
Originally written by WizSteve:
And when the printer says it needs to be 300 DPI, that's only a general rule not an absolute requirement. 300 DPI images simply look nicer since obviously there's more dots per inch, and so by telling you that they "need" 300 just means that you'll get a consistant quality by setting your standards at that level.
The very same reason we tell people that come to us for planing that their wood "needs" to be kiln dried. You "can" mill it if it was growing that morning, but I won't put my name/reputation on the job we'd do if the lumber wasn't dry enough to mill properly. Sounds like the printer has a similar concern.
 
Saved image from the "snapshot viewer" as a jpeg

opened in Photoshop - it was 72 dpi

Resampled at 300 dpi

Printed just fine on my b/w laser printer - I'll try color later.
 
I think your printer is just looking for a file that won't fall betwen the cracks of a 133 line screen. He's actually asking for a 266 dpi file or the next number up that is easy to remember. Hence, they all ask for 300 dpi. Whatever you give him, he'll use it at 266. That's what I'd bet.
 
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