Friday, November 23, 2012

Warning! dpi issues on ALL GD projects....

Any GD projects turned in at the end of the semester with bitmapped images will receive an automatic F. 

Period. No excuses. No explanations.

Printing images and looking at them on your computer screen are two entirely different things. Deal with it.

If you are using images that will not scale and print properly (i.e.: bitmap), you are not exhibiting basic competency as a designer and you're wasting time and materials. In general, ANY image you drag off the internet is low-res [72 dpi] or if the proper dpi (300 dpi required for good printing), not large in size enough to be able to scale to a usable image. Randomly increasing dpi on a poor image, or scaling a small image up significantly only increases the number of dots on an image that does not have enough information to print properly. It's a proportion thing. Like adding water to beer. Yes, you get more beer, but it sucks.

You must either locate good images by research, taking them yourself, or scanning them yourself. Failure to deal with this tells me and your potential future employer that you are either lazy, ignorant or both. Not only that, you are willing to waste your own time and money in unproductive ways.

The maximum resolution your computer screen can ever display is 72 dpi no matter what. You can make an image 1200 dpi and your screen can still only display 72dpi. Therefore poor images can look just fine on your computer screen. Printing devices are capable of imaging much finer, so bitmapping may only show up to your eye after you have printed. You don't have to print to know this however, because you already know that dpi lower than 300 will NOT PRINT properly.

Proof your work until its right.

There is a description of scaling, scanning and dpi issues in the Graphic Design Survival Guide. 

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