Printing

Digital Photography for Printing

Digital cameras can cut out much of the work involved in producing images for your print work. You can avoid costs for developing the prints and time spent shuffling through negatives and bad prints.

However, it is still best to use a conventional camera to achieve the best quality in your printed images. Prints from your conventional camera can be scanned by Creative Communications at the optimal size and resolution required for your project.

The wide variety of digital cameras on the market today differ greatly in the quality of images they produce. Often, color, sharpness and contrast must be adjusted to achieve an acceptable photo that has been produced by a digital camera. Correcting bad images (sharpness, color) takes time and can be costly.

If you need to use a digital camera for your print work, see the guidelines below to get good results in your printed materials.

Guidelines for Digital Cameras for Print Work

1. Use a camera that offers AT LEAST two megapixel output. A two megapixel camera has a resolution of 1600 x 1200 pixels. If possible, use a three megapixel camera.
   
   
2. Learn to use your camera. If you are adept at setting the camera up correctly for the environment you're shooting in, you will get better results.
   
   
3. Set your camera for the highest resolution possible. Many cameras have settings such as "Standard," "Normal," and "High Quality." Always use "High Quality" for your print work. If this setting only lets you shoot a small number of photos, get a larger flash memory card that allows you to store more photos. Check your camera's documentation to see if it can shoot 5 x 4 inch photos at 300ppi (pixels per inch) resolution. This translates to 1500 x 1200 pixels. If you want to print 5 x 4 inch photos, this is the minimum resolution you need. Larger photos will require a higher resolution camera.

   Settings for a 3.1-megapixel camera (Kodak DC4800):

   • 3.1 MP (uncompressed TIFF) 2160 x 1440 - (VERY GOOD)
   • 3.1 MP JPEG 2160 x 1440 - (GOOD)
   • 3.1 MP (high compression JPEG) 2160 x 1440 - (OK)
   • 2.2 MP JPEG 1800 x 1200 - (OK)
   • 1.6 MP JPEG 1536 x 1024 - (NOT ACCEPTABLE)
   • 0.8 MP JPEG 1080 x 720 - (NOT ACCEPTABLE)
   
   
   
4. If possible, save the image in TIFF format. TIFF is an uncompressed image format. Most cameras default to JPEG format to save flash memory space, but JPEG is a compressed image format. Compression degrades image quality can result in bad color artifacts in your images. These aren't that noticeable on-screen, but may show up in print. If you must use JPEG format, do not make adjustments to the images in Photoshop before delivering them to Creative Communications for printing.
   
   
5. Get close to your subject when taking your shot. If you take wide shots, you'll have to crop down the image later and will lose resolution. As mentioned earlier, with traditional camera prints we can scan at the resolution needed. With digital photos, we are stuck with the existing resolution.

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