Have you ever wondered why the images on your phone, or on your FaceBook page won’t work for printing a brochure or newsletter? Have you ever used them and they come out distorted or blurry? If you want a crisp clean picture for offset or digital printing, you first need to check the size of the file. Pictures you see on your computer screen are often not suitable for offset or digital printing.

If your document contains raster images that are too low in resolution it may comprise the quality of the way your final printed piece looks. Beware of the difference between your office inkjet or laser printer and high quality offset printing. Any pixilation or “roughness” in your image can become obvious when printed on offset, whereas you may hardly notice it on your inkjet printer.

The safe rule of thumb is to always save all your Images at 300 pixels/inch (also called dpi – dots per inch) at slightly bigger than the size they will finally be printed at.

Unfortunately any images that you download to your disk from a webpage will have a resolution of 72 pixels/inch. This means that unless the image is much larger than you need in print, it is probably too low resolution for good quality in print. Stock Photography downloaded from commercial websites will be at the resolution specified, and some sites give away free images at higher resolutions.

Digital Camera pictures can be a cost-effective easy way to get great images for print design. Always use the high quality setting on your camera to ensure high enough resolution.

Not so small print disclaimer: Information provided in our blog posts, that doesn’t directly apply to Futch Printing & Mailing, was obtained from various sources, too many to list, but mostly probably fairly accurate. Some images borrowed. We hope you enjoy!