Questions

Q. "If we are only supposed to scan grayscale at 266 dpi, why do you produce negatives at 2400 dpi?

A. The 266 dpi that you scan at only refers to scanning graphics where there are levels of gray or color. Since our printing presses only print at 133 lpi (a good industry standard for printing grayscale and one or two spot colors), they won't be able to detect a greater dpi than 266 (twice the lpi).

Scanning line art is different. Since there are no levels of gray, but only solid black/white areas, scanning can occur at much higher settings (such as 600 dpi or more). The higher the dpi of the scan, the sharper and more well defined the areas between the two contrasts.

The printing of text, however, needs an imagesetter that is 1200-2400 dpi to produce letters that are sharp, crisp and well defined. The breaking of letters at narrow points, seeing the individual dots in letters, or poor clarity of letters may be the result of printing at a much lower dpi.

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Q. "Do graphics have to be scanned at exactly the size they will be used? Can I scan an image at full size, and then install it at a percentage of the original size?"

A. We encourage people to import photos at 100% so the dpi of the original scan doesn't change. If you scan a photo at 266 dpi, import it and then change its size, its dpi will also change. If you stretch a photo to fit a larger space, it will still contain the same number of dots, but they will be spread out over a larger area. Consequently the dpi will decrease and the photo may print terrible.

If you decrease its dimensions significantly after it is imported, the dpi will increase but you won't necessarily get any better printing quality.

The key is to keep the dpi of all the photos as close as possible to the others, so they will all print with the same quality.

A problem occurs when a large graphic is imported and shrunk. The overall dimensions might be smaller, but the size of the file remains the same. Consequently it takes extra time and memory to process the photo, slowing the whole process down.

The best way to deal with the problem of resizing a photo is to set placeholders (empty graphics boxes) where the photos will go in the text. Set them to the dimensions of the original photo to begin with. Then tweak them to the final dimensions you will need, keeping the same relative proportions as the original. (On the Mac, hold down the command-option-shift keys and drag the handle of the graphics box to keep the same relative proportions.)

After you know the dimensions of the final photo, then scan at those dimensions, import it in at 100% and you'll be all set. We've done that many times here at Eagle and it works very well.

In general, if you tweak a photo no more than 25% after you import it, You'll be O.K.