Low Res Images QuarkXPress

Brief Description:

Image resolution is an umbrella term that describes the detail an image holds. The term applies to raster digital images, film images, and other types of images. Higher resolution means more image detail.

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:

One of the most common causes of disappointment in the finished, printed product is the poor quality of images. This in turn is usually because the image resolution was inadequate. Printed matter requires images with far higher resolution than is necessary for viewing on the screen of your computer. Computer screens, and therefore the Internet, need images of approximately 72 dpi (dots per inch). 72 dots per inch (dpi) means 72 rows of 72 dots, or a total of 5184 dots in a square inch (yes, metric equivalents are available, but no-one in the industry uses them). The ideal resolution for printing however is at least 300dpi, 300 rows each of 300 dots, or 90,000 dots in a square inch. Put another way, images destined for printing should contain almost 18 times more information than images destined for the computer screen. A 72 dpi image which is printed will have quite clearly visible small ‘steps’. Such an image will be indistinct, not sharp, and look very unprofessional. So one rule to follow is don’t use images taken from web sites unless you can obtain a high resolution copy of the image.

Please make sure all the images you use are at least 300dpi or as close thereto as you can get. By the way, there is absolutely no point in using images that have a higher dpi than 600dpi. You will never see the the difference in the printed job. And when we use the expression ‘300dpi’, we mean 300dpi at the final output size. If you have a 300dpi image that is, say 100x150mm, and blow it up to A4, you have reduced the effective resolution back to 75dpi, and achieved nothing.

Make sure that the resolution of images used in your file is not lower than 300dpi and do not resize them.

REFERENCES:

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