Low Res Images InDesign

Brief Description

Resolution refers to the number of pixels in an image. Resolution is sometimes identified by the width and height of the image as well as the total number of pixels in the image.

Image resolution or "DPI" ("dots per inch", also called "PPI" or "pixels per inch") determines the number of pixels that a digital image can contain and as such the depth of quality and size of the file. The more pixels an image can contain, the better quality it can be but also the larger the file size. It is important to understand how resolution affects image sizes - in print, the resolution does not affect the image size, but on screen, resolution can have dramatic effects on the image size.

What your issue is

Images look very nice on the monitor, however they become poor quality after the job is printed

How to fix this issue

Any graphics that you are producing for screen use (ie website graphics or on-screen displays) should generally be 72DPI.

Any graphics that you intend to print yourself on your desktop printer should generally be 150DPI.

Any graphics that you are having professionally produced by a commercial press or digital printing provider should be 300DPI.

More details

As you can see from the example below, the more pixels an image contains the more detail and quality it can contain. If you look at the smaller size images below, you will see that when they are expanded they become very "blocky" or "pixellated". There are a number of adopted standards in resolution which you should adhere to as often as possible to ensure best results. The commercial print world uses 300dpi for most of its output, so you should try and originate artwork to this resolution where possible.



NOTE: If you increase an image to 300dpi it will not improve the quality.

If your original image is under 300dpi then resizing it up to 300dpi simple expands the pixels, it does not improve the quality. In some cases it can actually degrade the quality. It is always best to down-size an image rather than attempt to up-size an image. If your original file is very small and low-resolution then you may have to accept that it is simply unusable in a commercial application.

Graphics you place in your document may appear pixelated or fuzzy or grainy. In most cases, it’s because InDesign displays images in low-resolution by default to improve performance.

1. Check the display settings

To display graphics in high resolution, choose View > Display Performance > High Quality Display. For more details on changing these display performance settings, see Control graphics’ display performance.

2. Use Place instead of Paste

The image may still be low resolution even though you changed the display performance settings. For these images, make sure that you use the Place command to insert the image into InDesign. In some instances, pasting an image from another application may result in the preview image being inserted instead of the original file.

3. Check your print settings

If your image appears in low resolution in print, check your print settings to make sure graphics are printing properly. In the Graphics section of the Print dialog box, choose Send Data > All.

4. Avoid transformations in images of borderline quality

In addition, scaling or rotating an image could reduce its quality. You may want to choose Clear Transformations from the Control panel menu.

5. Improve the image resolution

In some cases, such as with an image copied from a web page, you may need to replace a low-resolution image with a high-resolution image.

References:

Image Resolution, DPI, and quality

Image size and resolution

Raise Image Resolution Directly in InDesign

Adobe InDesign CS4