Designing your own publications

Choosing a platform
Fonts
Selecting software
Images
Ink
Paper
Rules for ordering printing
Writing specifications for print bids
Preparing files for a commercial printer
Additional resources

Using images in printed materials

Where can I get images?

Stock photography

Inexpensive on-campus solution

You can get images through the Facilities & Services Printing Department's online image database.

Traditional stock photography

Comstock sells photo CD collections, or you can buy images singly through Corbis, who compute their charges based on how you plan to use the photograph.

Inexpensive off-campus solution

Another option is iStockphoto, where you can either pay for images ($1.50 or less per photo) or contribute to their library in exchange for downloading privileges. The images are taken by a variety of photographers so the quality varies. If you're in doubt at all as to whether a particular image will work well on press, ask for a proof from your printer.

Free on-campus solution

The newest option on campus is the Phantasm collection, created by Kalev Letaru, a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign undergraduate student. He has taken 45,000 images of the campus, as a personal project. As far as we know, the images haven't been tried on a press, and if you choose a photograph with people in it you're responsible for tracking down those people and asking them to sign model-release forms. Again, if you have any doubts at all, ask for a proof from your printer.

If you do use these photos in an offset or digitally printed piece, please let us know!

Commission your own photography

Although hiring a photographer is more expensive than using stock photography, you will have greater control over the art and you'll be able to ensure that the faculty, students, and staff in your pictures are actually from the University of Illinois. This means you won't see them in a competitor's brochure or poster.

Looking for a photographer? See Purchasing's list of vendors for Professional and Artistic Services or contact Creative Services for a recommendation.

What do I do with slides or prints?

I’ve got a bunch of slides and color prints that I want to use for my brochure. What's the best way to scan them?

The best choice is not to scan them. Send them to the printer who’ll be producing your job. Their scanners are calibrated to their presses and they can send you “randoms” or proofs of the images (you’ll want to make sure those images are adjusted for dot gain). Be sure to ask for a proof of the image from the printer so you'll know exactly what you're getting.

What do I do when I receive digital images?

Odds are good your image will come as a jpg file. If you open the image, you'll want to save it as a tif file (jpegs reduce image quality every time they save). You’ll want to be certain you use at least 300 dpi images and that the size is appropriate for your end use.

You also need to ensure that your image is in CMYK and not RGB format. You may notice a minimal or dramatic change in color when you convert images from RGB (how monitors convey color) to CMYK (an acronym for the four ink colors–cyan, magenta, yellow, and black–that are mixed to render your images in color). You will see the most dramatic difference in conversion in photographs that have a lot of blue in them. You can convert the images yourself in Photoshop, or you can ask the printer to do it.

If you hire your printer for this job, they can provide you with a relatively accurate proof of what the final image will look like – and they're responsible for matching the proof. If you do it yourself, there's no guarantee that what you see on your screen or from your laser printer will resemble the final printed piece.

I have some scans from someone else / a long time ago/ a cheap digital camera / unknown sources. How can I tell if they’ll be OK in my publication?

Send them to the printer and ask for their opinion and a random or proof of the image. If you don’t like the way the proof looks, you’ll know not to use the picture.

What if I’m using a digital camera to take pictures for my brochure?

Here is an answer from the designers in Creative Services:

“It’s important to shoot your image as close to the final magnification as possible. When in doubt, it’s best to shoot photos for print at the highest resolution and largest file-size settings.”

Be sure to have at least a 4-megapixel camera and good lighting if you’re taking shots of people. In fact, if you’re taking pictures of people, it would be best to use an extremely expensive camera or the good old classic: film. Otherwise, it can be tough to capture skin shades.

If you plan to use the same images on the web, take two sets – especially if you’re taking pictures of people. When you reduce an image drastically, you can use a lot of clarity. It's worth switching camera settings to have a really good web library and a really good print library of portraits. Buildings and landscapes are not as demanding.

Web to print

I’d like to use the pictures from my web site in my brochure. What do I need to do to make that work?

Your best bet is to shoot them over. Keep in mind that images work well on a screen at 72 dpi (dpi stands for “dots per inch,” which is what web site images use as their resolution). 300 dpi at the final size is the resolution most often required when an image is headed for a printing press. Even if you take a 72 dpi image and change the settings to 300 dpi, you’ll still have the 72 dpi amount of information. For print, you must start with a high-resolution (high-res) image. It’s okay to reduce a high-resolution image a little (for example, take a 300 dpi 3” x 5” image and shrink it to a 300 dpi 2.25” x 3.75” image), but odds are good that if you blow one up, you’ll be unhappy with the results.

Preparing images for printers

Recommended file formats

• tif: tagged image file format. The most common and portable format for saving bitmap scans.
• eps: encapsulated postscript: used for saving vector-based art (line art such as logos) or raster (bitmaps which can't be scaled or edited) options. If your image has type and you choose to save it as an eps (so your type will stay sharp) you should first convert the type to outlines so anyone who doesn't own the typeface will still be able to print it correctly.
• scitex: used by Scitex imaging systems. You can open these files in Photoshop.

File formats to use with caution

• jpg: joint photographic experts group. Jpg files should be converted to tifs as soon as they’re opened. Saving files in jpg format means you’re compressing them every time you save them. Saving as a tif file helps avoid this continual loss in quality.

Before you use a jpg file, check the image size to ensure it hasn't already been compressed to the point where there's no quality left. Also check to see whether the image is CMYK or RGB. If you're printing in 4-color and it's RGB, convert it and make the necessary adjustments BEFORE it goes to the printer so there will be no surprises.

File formats to avoid

• bmp: Windows bitmap. Quality will probably suffer if you reduce or enlarge the image.
• pict: Macs use this as a default for images. Used for video or multimedia, images are not print quality.
• gif: Graphics interchange format. This is great if you're preparing line art or type-based images for the web. It is not a good choice for print because it only uses up to 256 colors.

Resolution

Check with your printer. Different presses can hold different line screens. An image scanned at 200 lines per inch will look great on one press and awful on another (if it can't hold that much detail, the ink will clog up instead and your image will be blotchy).

 

Don’t see your question answered? Let us know.