Hi all,

Just asking a quick question about something that's not really in my comfort zone. Recently I have retouched some images for a client, and they have gave me a few brief instructions on the how the images want saving.

They have specified they want the images to be provided "web ready and print ready (native size/full pixels- no interpolation)"

I wouldn't say I'm particularly confident with images fit for print etc as this isn't my fortay. My understanding is that no interpolation means don't add extra pixels (or make the image any bigger)- is this correct? Native sizing to me, means keep the size and only change the resolution. My understanding of resolution has always been 72ppi for web and 300ppi for print, although some images also require 300ppi for web.

Just wanted a bit of advice from you lovely people that know what they're talking about!

Thanks,

One important thing is to sharpen images only AFTER re-sizing.

Other than that, this should tell you what you need to know:

http://www.picturecorrect.com/tips/how- … -printing/

..If this is an important job and the client wants a professional result for print, then I'd worry more about colour calibration than DPI - see that link. If the printer assumes that your colour balance is correct and your monitor isn't correctly calibrated, then final colours could be rather whacky. A hardware calibrator is the professional soltuion, but there are some cheaper options:

http://www.digitaltrends.com/computing/ … monitor/2/

I'll toss on that what you see on your monitor may be too blue for the printer.  I posed this question for retouchers who print some time ago (got crickets) as often what I get from someone who has PS'd their images to look good on their LCD screen print sadly unless altered.

Our little LCD screens are generally bluish at around 6,500 Kelvin (D65) or higher, and prints for display indoors are usually viewed on monitors calibrated to around 5,000 Kelvin (D50).  I alter my screen between D50 and D65 settings depending on whether I am using the printers that day, or playing on the web and watching videos there with the bluish D65 light.

My retouch monitor is an Eizo CG-248-4K which has Color Navigator 6 and allows for On-the-Fly color management screen color shifts from D50, D65, etc. as well as brightness for them.  Eizo loads a factory-tuned Web (D65), Photography, and Printing (D50) profile and I can flip between them easily.  I can also manually load (visually) various paper and profiles I find works better for them and emulate/adjust on its screen for their optical brightners which may be more blue-white than what I would see otherwise in a non-optical brightner or archival paper.  Sort of a secondary profile visual matching.

Then you have the sRGB colorspace for web, and maybe something larger for the printer in Adobe RGB 1998.  Depends on the printer's machines and setup if they have multiple colors of inks available to cover a larger gamut than sRGB.

The standard printer PPI numbers are 300 for Canons, and 360 for Epsons.  I have both printer models and use Qimage Ultimate as the printer's pre-driver and tuning software to feed them which sets it up automatically, and I can do a "Print to File" (Save) for an image too.  I'm printing right now and I see Qimage has set one printer to "Max.-720 PPI" (360x2 I guess?).  Qimage handles all the resizing, PPI work, and sharpening automatically for me and the printed output seems a lot better than Adobe PS or LR too, imho.

Hopefully the printer will be able to alter your images as needed.  They may not want to and I find some just do everything as sRGB too and some who will just do JPG only as well.  If you submit a large TIFF to one I know, they will kick it back as well as any ProPhoto embedded image.  They know what you saw, and what they might flip it too, may become an issue so they just request images in sRGB and JPG only and not try and second guess your visualization.

Good luck, but I would ask for clarification from the printer as they do have their preferences and some can be picky.