HELP!

spiralout

TPF Noob!
Joined
Nov 11, 2004
Messages
679
Reaction score
5
Location
University of Houston
I have a magazine that wants to use one of my photos on the cover of their debut issue. I sent them a larger file than the one found online because the photo looked terribly pixelated when it was enlarged enough to fit the magazine cover (they had the cover preview on their site). They just emailed me and told me that their printer needs a 300dpi file. This wouldn't be a problem except for the fact that I shot it with film and had to scan at 3200dpi.

Now I'm not to familiar with the world of publication and printing, but I honestly can't see why they couldn't use the file I sent them. Does anyone know if using a 3200 dpi image file would be a problem? I can't change the resolution without the shot shrinking down to miniscule dimensions.
 
not sure i fully understand this, you sent them a 3200dpi res picture, but they want 300dpi? if you lower the resolution it may appear smaller on screen, but as long as the dimensions are right, it will print the correct size.

if not can you scan it in again at 300dpi and at the required dimensions?
 
It's a sampling issue. Here's some bad maths to get you started:

In this case, your scanned 35mm neg is 35mm x 45mm ish (0.177") wide at 3200 dots per inch. The magazine cover is about 210mm x 297mm ish (8.27") wide at 300 dots per inch.

Therefore, your neg is forty five (ish) times smaller than the cover and needs to be 45 x 300dpi to satisfy their bit depth. This equates to 13,500 dpi at the original negative size or 300dpi at magazine cover size.

Your picture is theoretically four times too low res for them as it stands. This is why most mags used to use transparancies, and stock art for large res publication needs to be drum scanned or used as a smaller image.

That said, don't despair - you could try resizing the image in PS and resampling the resolution to their requirements to artificially increase it's resolution. If you want to send it to me to do this, I'd be happy to do it. You'll need to know exactly how big the magazine will be (they vary slightly).

A 35mm scan easily goes to A4, so you should be fine. Magazine printers are never particularly high-quality and tend to posterise at 300dpi which will hide any detail issues.

Hope this helps???

Rob
 
I don't understand. You end up with a file about 3200x4800 pixels when you scan a 35mm neg at 3200 ppi. That's 10" x 16" at 300 ppi.
 
robhesketh said:
It's a sampling issue. Here's some bad maths to get you started:

In this case, your scanned 35mm neg is 35mm x 45mm ish (0.177") wide at 3200 dots per inch. The magazine cover is about 210mm x 297mm ish (8.27") wide at 300 dots per inch.

Therefore, your neg is forty five (ish) times smaller than the cover and needs to be 45 x 300dpi to satisfy their bit depth. This equates to 13,500 dpi at the original negative size or 300dpi at magazine cover size.

Your picture is theoretically four times too low res for them as it stands. This is why most mags used to use transparancies, and stock art for large res publication needs to be drum scanned or used as a smaller image.

That said, don't despair - you could try resizing the image in PS and resampling the resolution to their requirements to artificially increase it's resolution. If you want to send it to me to do this, I'd be happy to do it. You'll need to know exactly how big the magazine will be (they vary slightly).

A 35mm scan easily goes to A4, so you should be fine. Magazine printers are never particularly high-quality and tend to posterise at 300dpi which will hide any detail issues.

Hope this helps???

Rob

Thank you very much, Rob. I have yet to receive an email from them telling me whether the file worked or not. I get the feeling that they have NO idea what they are doing... well, to be fair, neither do I. The issue they are printing is supposed to be the May issue... not sure if that's gonna happen.

So let me get this straight: do I resize so that it will be the correct dimensions when viewed at 100% in Photoshop and then resample, etc. from there?

Thanks for the offer.

Scott
 
Scott: Yes, I would say so... you have two independent controls in PS for the document size and the resolution. If you scale the picture to the magazine's size i.e. A4 and make sure that the res is 300dpi, you will alter the file size somewhat, but in Quark or whatever they're using it will be "acceptable". That's my theory, and it concurs with your thought that they aren't exactly experts with images.

Matt, you're quite right - I was a decimal point out on my inches!! (hence my failure in the world of maths), but I still believe that their problem is to do with the way they have resized the images.

The short of it is that a 35mm neg scanned at this res should easily cope with being enlarged to magazine cover size. Your client has evidently got into some difficulty with fitting the picture, but it should definately work.

I think that they'll be fine if you can give them the image at the physical size that they want it, with the res set at 300dpi. As Matt has quite rightly said, this is very achievable.

Perhaps it's time to start thinking about the June issue!!

Sorry for the bad maths. I'll stick to computers from now on - I'm much better in the ambiguous world of Microsoft.

Rob
 
Thanks again, Rob. Wow, that was incredibly easy. I didn't realize that I could change the res and dimensions separately. *duh!* Now I just have to wait for them to email me back.
 

Most reactions

New Topics

Back
Top