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Re: Illustrations in electronic publications and paper editions?
Subject:Re: Illustrations in electronic publications and paper editions? From:David Neeley <dbneeley -at- oddpost -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 2 Apr 2004 13:12:59 -0800 (PST)
Among some very good and (typically) well-explained points that Geoff made, I ran into the idea that one prints (presumably via offset press) at "75 lpi screen".
While the "gold standard" for maximum quality for print is indeed double the output resolution, I have rarely seen 75 lpi offset for illustrated manuals. In fact, newspapers and other web press output is generally higher than that.
For sheet-fed offset, I would think the smallest resolution normally used for print would be 133 or 150 lpi. If the illustration is in color, much would depend upon the device which creates the plates or the camera-ready copy. However, most commercial typesetters will output 1200 dpi or more. Still, it should be sufficient to determine what the offset press resolution will be for final printing and create the graphic at double that number...in this case 266 or 300.
Extremely high-quality offset printing today will run around 300 dpi, and digital typesetters will often be over 2,000 dpi for creating camera-ready art. I am not current with direct-to-press imaging to know what they are doing in terms of resolution, but your printer should be able to give guidance based upon the equipment to be used.
On the other hand, if the output is to be on toner-based laser printers, then the situation is once again somewhat different. For black and white output, I would want to create raster images at least at the resolution of the laser, which seems to be commonly at least 600 dpi.
David
"Yes and no. If you want a 'one image fits all situations but fits none
of them ideally', then you need some kind of scaleable graphic format.
If you're hung up on JPEG, it's worth noting that a 300 dpi image may
be twice the resolution you need; as a rule of thumb, you can get
decent results by using an image resolution only twice the output
resolution (typically a 75 lpi screen in print) if you're using the
image at 100%."
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