White Paper: Getting the Most Out of Your Photos: A Guide to Art Files

July 2007
design

We want your pictures to look pretty.
On many occasions, Big Duck incorporates art (especially photos) provided by clients into the materials we develop. We strive to get the best quality art possible for the particular piece being created (website or brochure, etc.). To that end, we’ve written this White Paper to help clarify what that means as you submit your art files to our team.

It looks good on the website. Why will it look terrible in your annual report (or other printed piece)?
Generally speaking, websites use low-resolution (lo-res) images and print pieces use high-resolution (hi-res) images. Websites use lo-res images so that they load quickly, and since those images are usually tiny (in comparison to printed photos), the files don’t need to be of the highest quality to look good.

For our purposes, it’s always best if the images you submit to us are hi-res. We can turn hi-res files into lo-res files. But we can’t turn lo-res files into hi-res files. (Technically we can, but they won’t look good.)

Dot what?
Let’s begin with the various file formats. When creating your website or print pieces, we can use JPEG, TIFF, or EPS files.

This document (attached below) is called “artsubmission.pdf.” The “.pdf” tells us it’s Portable Document Format (or a PDF, as it’s commonly called), opened with ease in your free Adobe Reader software. The type of file is a part of the name.

The same holds true for your art files. Most digital cameras convert your photos into JPEG files. So if you look at the file name, it will probably end in “.jpg” thereby informing you that yes, it’s a JPEG file. It’s “.tif” for TIFF files and “.eps” for EPS files. Easy enough.

OK, so you’ve got a JPEG, TIFF, or EPS file you want us to use. How do you know if it’s hi-res or lo-res?

File size matters.
There is at least one way you can guess if your file is hi-res or lo-res: if you can email a bunch of photos at once, and it doesn’t take too long, your images are probably lo-res. If it takes for-freakin’-ever, the images are probably hi-res.

You can also check the file size. To do this on a Mac, hold down the “ctrl” button while you click on the file with the mouse (this is where you would also double-click if you wanted to open the file). A menu will pop up. Select “Get Info.”

To do this on a PC, you can “right-click” with the mouse on the file and select “Get Info.”

Macs and PC’s will offer the same info when you “Get Info.” Near the file name, you will see a number followed by KB (kilobyte) or MB (megabyte). For example, this “artsubmission.pdf” file is currently 92 KB, or 92 kilobytes. Before images were added, and this was just a wee Microsoft Word document, it was 52 KB. MS Word files are very cute and small like that.

Art files, especially hi-res art files, are monsters. If your art/image file is only 52 KB, it’s barely lo-res. It’s closer to no-res.

For a hi-res image, you’ll generally be looking for a file size of 1 MB or above. If it’s less than 500 KB, you’ve got yourself a lo-res image. Anything between 500 KB and 1 MB is sort of a medium-resolution (me-res, perhaps?) file.

Well, now, look at you, Fancy Pants.
Occasionally, we’ll throw around highfalutin abbreviations such as “ppi” or “dpi.” Those just mean ‘pixels-per-inch’ and ‘dots-per-inch,’ respectively. Pixels-per-inch tells you exactly that: how many pixels your art file is per inch. The more pixels-per-inch, the higher the resolution or quality of your art file. Dots-per-inch is how many dots of ink a printer will use per inch on the page. More dots mean better quality printing.

Web images (lo-res) are typically 72 ppi. For offset printing, images must be at least 300 ppi. If you have the software program Photoshop, you can check the ppi of an image. Otherwise, checking the file size will be the best way of determining the quality of your image files.

The following example illustrates the importance of resolution in the artwork you send us:

image

Both images are terrifying (his eyes follow you from side-to-side!), and it is perhaps debatable as to which format makes the bunnies scarier, but there’s no denying that the 300 ppi image is clearer.

Why not blow it up?
Let’s say for a moment that you want to use the 300 ppi image of those bunnies, but you need it to be larger. (We understand this is a terrifying proposition with this particular image, but pretend it’s an image you really want to use, and not some bunny giving you the stink-eye.)

A small, 300 ppi version of the photo will not be as clear when blown up to twice its size. The pixels don’t keep up. The 2”x3” photo is 300 ppi. If we stretch it to 4”x6” the photo will be 150 ppi.

So if you’re sending us photos at 300 ppi, the larger the photos, the more flexibility we have in using them. It’s always easier to scale down than scale up.

Don’t be stingy with your memory.
So if your organization is using digital photography to document your activities, here are a few things to keep in mind to ensure that the photos you’re taking are hi-res:


Saturate us with color.
Sometimes, black and white photos will look better for a particular printed piece or website. You do not need to submit black and white photos to us. In fact, we would prefer to receive color photos in case we need to use color versions at another time.

Like going from hi-res to lo-res, we can change photos from color to black and white. But going from black and white to color is a bit problematic, as Ted Turner proved when he decided to colorize all our favorite classic movies. Man, they looked terrible.

Please enjoy a brief logo interlude.
When you give us your logo, please submit it as an EPS file, in the appropriate colors (four-color, spot-color, black & white, etc.). Logos are usually vector files (a.k.a. drawings), created in illustration programs such as Adobe Illustrator. Vector files can be reproduced sharply and scaled to whatever size they need to be without resolution worries. If it has not already been done so, please make sure the fonts used in your logo are outlined (to avoid what we like to call “font issues”). If you have artwork embedded in your logo, please also provide us with the source file(s).

If any or all of this sounds like gibberish that we’re just making up, or if your eyes glazed over while reading, please speak with your client services contact, who will either explain the details or have someone on our design team talk you through the process.

And that massive archive of actual photographs?
Some of our clients have terrific archives of photographs they’ve taken and collected over the years. If we plan to use these photographs, they will need to be digitized. A number of approaches will work:


Aw, nuts. That perfect image is lo-res.
All may not be lost. As we’ve said, lo-res images can work just fine for your online projects. Whether or not we can use your lo-res images beyond the web depends upon the specific project.

While it may not be optimal, there are certain tricks of the trade that the Big Duck design team can employ to improve your photos, in spite of their limited, low-resolution ways. But naturally, the better the image quality, the more options we have. We love a good high-resolution image.

Shucks. Thanks much. I’m (re)touched.

Let’s say your hi-res photo has imperfections. Maybe your Executive Director has spinach in her toothy grin. Maybe you had to fire that assistant because he refused to stop wearing those short shorts, and you need him removed from the staff photo before it goes in the annual report.

Or, using that scary photo of the bunnies as an example again (oh, the bunninity!), maybe that one bunny peeking in on the right side of the photo frightens you.

We can retouch photos. Just keep in mind that it’s time-consuming and therefore costly. How time-consuming and costly depends upon the specific issue. Losing the small bunny on the right wouldn’t be too difficult. Getting into the details of removing spinach from teeth would be a little more difficult. Removing entire people and recreating a background would be even more so.

If you have hi-res photos that need retouching, the best thing to do is discuss with your Big Duck client services contact. We’ll probably have you send us the image file, and we will then offer you an estimate for the work that needs to be done.

Let us make beautiful communications together.
We hope this art and photo submission overview has been helpful. We look forward to using your (preferably hi-res) images to create effective communications tools for your organization.

If you have any questions about hi-res or lo-res, pixels or megapixels, kilobytes or megabytes, file size or file format, improving lo-res photos or retouching, please speak to your client services contact here at Big Duck.

To download a PDF version of this White Paper, please click here.

© 2007 Big Duck. All rights reserved. No part of this case study may be copied, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in each case in any form or by any means, without prior permission from Big Duck.