If you are scanning the images yourself from photographs for graphic design works, it is better to save them in either tif, or eps format. These image formats will preserve the color and sharpness of your pictures the best. File formats like gif or jpg compress the pictures color and pixel resolution and this can cause color shifts and blurriness. Since jpg and gif are the most predominant image formats on the web, it follows that it's not a good idea to simply lift an image from someone's website and use it in your layout.

You, like other graphic designers, should scan your images using a resolution of 300dpi at the final dimensions you intend to use them so that your colors will look smooth, and hard objects will look sharp. In other words don't scan at 300dpi and then enlarge the picture by 200% in your layout program!

This is another reason why graphic designers should not use images that are lifted from websites; they are probably only 72dpi in resolution and will look very blurry if printed on a printing press. See the Resolution page for more information on resolution.

If graphic designers are using pictures from your digital camera they will work just fine if they are jpgs; the quality of jpg images from digital cameras seems to be much better than jpgs that are used on the web. Commonly, Graphic Designers must do the math to make sure that it is high enough in pixel resolution though.

For instance, if your camera puts out a typical image of 1280 x 960 pixels at 72dpi you get about 17" x 13" of photograph (at 72dpi); this is the same amount of detail as an image which is 4" x 3" at 300dpi so it's safe to reduce or enlarge that image in Publisher up to about 4" x 3" in dimension.

Will my printed piece look exactly like it does on my computer monitor?
There are some small differences. Scanners and digital cameras create images using combinations of just three colors: Red, Green and Blue (called "RGB"). These are the colors that computers use to display images on your screen. But printing presses print full color pictures using a different set of colors: Cyan (blue), Magenta (red), Yellow and Black (called "CMYK"). So at some stage your RGB file must be translated to CMYK in order to print it on a printing press. This is easily done using an image editing program like PhotoShop or Corel PhotoPaint.

Do I need to send you my fonts?

If you use only the fonts that came with MS Publisher then no. But if you use any other fonts from other sources you to gather up copies of them and archive them together using a program like Winzip and send them to us with your layout file. You should find good substitutes for your typefaces and store in your folder file include, if there are no font you use at printing services companies.