Photos and Line Art

Photos or illustrations that are well done can add value and substance to your book. Poorly done, they can add cost and cost credibility.

Scanning - Scan photos for use in your black and white book as 8 bit greyscale files. Try to scan images at close to 100% of the size that you want them to print with a 300 dpi resolution. If you want to use a portion of a three by five photo at twice its size in your book, please crop and scale the image at the time that you scan it, you will get much better results.
Another thing to watch for at scanning time is color range. If the image is very dark in some areas you may be able to lighten it up a bit while scanning. Some scanners tend to "burn out" highlight details, if you see faces, shirts or sky details dropping out you can probably fix it by adjusting the histogram in your scanning software.

Scanning from Newspapers - When scanning old newspaper photos or images from other books, using the descreening setting in your scanning software may be helpful. This feature applies a bit of blurring to an image to remove the dots from an earlier printing. If that doesn't work you might try taking a picture of the clipping with an electronic camera in closeup mode. (Please be mindful of copyright restrictions on this type of art it is far better to ask permission than to risk the consequences of copyright infringement.)

Color Scans - color art for the cover and/or body of your book may work fine off your home scanner. Please be sure to scan in 24-bit color mode at 300 dpi and be certain that there is at least a 5% dot in highlight areas.

Scanning Lineart - scan illustrations, line drawings, text, anything that is truly black and white in the black and white 1 bit setting with resolution of 600 - 1,200 dpi.

Web Graphics - 72 dpi (web quality) graphics are NOT acceptable for high quality, offset printing. We will print what you send us, but very low resolution graphics can be very disappointing.

Saving Your Files - When saving images TIF, EPS, and JPEG formats are recommended. GIF, BMP, are not acceptable and may add extra costs. Be sure that all of your photos have unique names and that they are placed in a single folder on your disc.

If you are concerned about the quality of any of your images please send the originals along with your job. We may be able to get a better result.