[Sedul]

Hi!
Image

Please criticize till death.
and i have some questions. (relating to post about pixel / resolution / printing in Discussion forum)

I have the original at 13" x 19" 150 dpi when i painted it ( i know dpi is small to work with but i didn't want my computer to crash (I can handle bigger though))

Here's the deal, When u post to the web, obviously u size it down so that

1) i'ts smaller in size.
2) fits monitor dpis
3) It looks better because you size down and your brush strokes blend together

the latter of the 3 is the thing si have a problem with.

13" x 19" 150 dpi is what i printed at out of my HP deskjet. Oh god. the brush strokes show so bad...

Normally if you do desktop prints, are you suppose to follow the same process as posting the web? Work high dpi (so to add detail and brush strokes) then size it down to say 150 dpi / 300 dpi for printing (so that your brush strokes look smoother toegheter blend. etc. ) just like as if u posted it to the web?

Or do you just print (and i'm suppose to use the paintbrush tool more effectively and / or start using the airbrush tool)

Who here draws with just paintbrush entirely?

and enayla? anyone knows if she paints with airbrush or paintbrush mainly? her stuff is so smooth and good!!! *kudos

Anyhow, basically i'm just having some troubles with resolution and what to do and what not to do. mbe some opinions and people who has experience with printing and setting up stuff... woudl be nice


BTW> Wah'ts a good site/guide to learning from ground up about pre-press printing .
or whatever you do when you work as a graphics artist and take your stuff to print at a service bureau (work together)


Thanks!

[ January 16, 2002: Message edited by: Sedul ]

EDIT -come to think of it. I sized this down from 13 x 19 150 dpi and i still see brush strokes in the sea ( i guess i rushed it).. like.. that means i need to spend more time blending rite? (paint brush tool.. god so long!). well the hands are ok.. and the island.. i spent time on those.. kinda..

Oh wh'at a good general rule about sizing down stuff? like you should work twice - four times the size of what you want to have as your final output?

[ January 16, 2002: Message edited by: Sedul ]

[melted petal]

Well under optimal conditions you would do it about 600 dpi and then bring it down to 300 for print. I don't think I have ever coem down to just 150 for print media but then thats because my boss would kill me.

It also never hurts to really tighten up your brush strokes too. It all just depends ont he look you are going for.

prepress can be a total bitch. just got through a run at Quad Graphics in Milwuakee. Man those guys know their stuff. Was great to work with pros. Unfortunately for personal projects I dont know anyone that can afford to pay a fortune for printing so if you have a slow machine you just have to grit your teeth, bump up that resolution and go for it. It makes it a lot harder sometimes but resizing down is sooo much nicer afterwards, even if you have to listen to that hardrive grind for an hour just for a gaussian blur.

Loki from the boards here has some good computer setup info at his site. Not a lot on prepress stuff but very helpful all around.

His site can be found at Digital Outpost

Personally I would just try and work more and more on your strokes to tighten them up. Practice makes perfect. I hate sayign that but I have improvd so much over the past year from just drawing the same stuff over and over until I finally got it right.

Also, on prints that big I know a machine can really slow down when bumping up the res. Unless it really needs to be that big I'd really work everything out smaller first before tackling something thats hard enough with out having to wait between brush strokes.

A new computer never hurts either. God I love my new computer. Hope I have been some help. Feels like I have just rambled.

[Novacaptain]

the hands need a little work, especially the lower one. And the background looks very rushed.

The lighthouse seems to be shooting out a very strange light. A beam of light isn't really visible until it hits something. A laser, for example, isn't visible...you just see the litle dot where it is aimed at. Lighthouses usually have visible beams because of mist and/or rain. In that case the light is reflected by the tiny droplets of water, creating a soft-edged cone of light that gradually fades in intensity.

I usually take my work on a CD-RW to a printshop (they have these nice laser color printers) and print it out at around 400-450 dpi (so it doesn't get too jagged).

I think monitors display at 75 dpi and tv's at 72. That is why pictures are always much larger on your PC screen than on the printout. If you do a picture at 75dpi it'll come out the same size as it is on your monitor but the quality will be dirt poor.

[Sedul]

Novacaptain. Thanks for the critz
Melted - thanks too

Nova - 400 - 450 dpi to printshop? but do you size it down from the origianl dpi? like 800?

Is there even an advantage to size down from a 800dpi (res u were werking at ) to a 400 dpi one (so that ur brush strokes look smoother).. and then print the 400 dpi out

would that matter on a printer.

[Novacaptain]

Do a test:

go to photoshop and click on new image.

Now set the size in inches to whatever, 32 wide and 16 tall for example.

change the DPI to 75.

Now you've got a printing steeing for an image that'll be 32 inches wide and 16 tall but every inch will have 75 dots on it.

I don't know if that's a square inch or if a square inch would have 75x75 dots. In terms of printing quality, either way, it's pretty awful.

Now check how many pixels it'd be (just change the units to pixels instead of inches).

The width is 2400 pixels and the height is 1200.

This means that if you make an image of that size on your screen and print it at 75 dpi, it'd have 32x16 inches on the paper.

now, change the units back to inches and kick the DPI up to 450.

Notice that the "image size" just exploded into aumber over 200MB in size.

Now check the pixels...14400x7200.
The printed image would be the exact same size as the first one, but imagine the amount of detail you could get into with a canvas of that size...That's what resolution is all about.

For pre-press images it's hardly ever an advantage to shring the size (in pixels) of the image. That's used sometimes for web/tv where you want to shrink your work down to make it look more detailed. For printing, altering the DPI will only affect the final size on the paper that your image will occupy.

By increasing your DPI you will reduce the on-paper result. Cramming the wole picture into a smaller space will make it look more detailed but smaller (obviously).

Lowering the dpi will cause the image to expand and take more room on paper. when melted petal said that he wouldn't risk going below 150 dpi it would be because at that point the quality starts looking really depressing (the image looks larger though).

When I ssaid that I do my work at 450 for the printshop i mean that in the "new image" menu I set the size of the picture i want in the end (measure an A4 with a ruler to get an idea) in centimeters. Then i set the resolution for 450 dpi. I then work with the pixels i'm given by photoshop and don't alter the size/resolution again.

This way i can be assured of getting an image of the exact size intended with a 450 dpi resolution for print (which is not bad).

I recommend working with cmyk colors for print (if your machine can handle it) because there are more RBG colors than CMYK colors so you'll experience a color loss if you convert it. Some of the conversion's approximations aren't always what you might have had in mind.

I hope I made sense enough...going to bed now.

[Sedul]

hi Novacaptian thanks for the detailed reply

i understand some of what you're saying but i understand dpi and resolution and all that stuff.
i'm just baffled by the printing part. and wondering if anybody would lower their dpi to make their brush strokes less evident

for example:

you say u set a4 size then set the resolution to 450pixels/ inch. i understsand that.

u'll have like 8.5 in x 450 by 14 in x 450 pixels. size image.

So depending on your printer's quality, you can print out so many pixels per inch.

But what i am saying even though if u can print that and have the cability to do so.

as you can see with my image ( even if i'ts shruhnk down to this dpi)
ther' alot of brush strokes seen at the original dpi that i worked at. and zoomed in 100%

when i print this. it's like an exact print to the paper. and it sees all the nasty scribbling and such

what i'm suggesting is to size it down so that the "detailed" brush strokes are lossed and muddled together blended.. (just like when u size down images to display on comptuer (the detail is there, the brush strokes ar eless noticeable, only when u get the original image and zoom in then u can see). .. so that when u print. u have the same effect of having it more smooth looking and not rugged.. on paper.

OR

just draw better and tighten up my strokes like what meltedpot said



thanks for ur time

[Novacaptain]

If you increase the DPI of that particular image, it will come out smaller on paper, thus giving you the "blended" strokes you were referring to. However, you can shrink some images down to the size of a stamp and it still will look scribbly unless you work on them properly

[Sedul]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Novacaptain:
If you increase the DPI of that particular image, it will come out smaller on paper, thus giving you the "blended" strokes you were referring to. However, you can shrink some images down to the size of a stamp and it still will look scribbly unless you work on them properly

---

hrm so it's the other way around.
dat kinda makes senses

unles ur dpi is too high for ur printer. (home inkjets).. that even increasing it won't help

should acutlaly test it out and see waht's best

thanks!

i want to swtich my hp 1220c for an epson 1280