We recommend ordering a physical proof so you can see for yourself (you can try printing it out on a desktop printer to preview it instantly). If you’re concerned, you can always ask your customer service representative how the lower-resolution print can do. If you can live with low resolution, just go ahead and print it. The first thing you need to do is to ask if your prints are critical on quality in other words: can you live with lower print quality? For example, many color copies and flyers are looked at once then thrown away.
If you can’t design your print files at 300 PPI, there are a couple steps you need to take to see if the low resolution will work for you. We always recommend designing in 300 PPI for printing, but we also know that sometimes you just don’t have the ability to edit your designs. What to do if you can’t design your print files at 300 PPI resolution Additionally, it will make your file significantly larger (making it more time-consuming to upload/download your files). As far as the eye can tell, there will be no difference in print quality. On the other hand, there is no point in designing at higher than 300 PPI. Designing a file in lower than 300 PPI will lead to blurriness and pixellation. This issue applies to all print products, from small products like business cards and postcards to larger products like booklet printing and a pocket folder. 300 PPI is the ideal printing resolution for qualityģ00 PPI is the optimal printing resolution for digital printing presses. Increasing the resolution after you start will still result in blurriness/pixellation. Photoshop) to 300 PPI before starting to design your file. We recommend that you set the resolution in your image editor (i.e. 3300 pixels tall (300 pixels/inch * 11 inches).2550 pixels wide (300 pixels/inch * 8.5 inches) and.Since every inch contains 300 pixels, that means that your 8.5”x11” file should be: What does it mean for your file design? Well, let’s say that you’re designing a file which is 8.5” wide and 11” tall. The only way to fix this issue is to replace it with a high resolution image or file. Low resolution is a common issue, but is considered a “design error” that can delay an order. It is a word that is used constantly when speaking about digital files. Hopefully the image is still visibly big enough for you on the business cards.Resolution is a frequently asked question amongst Printivity printing customers. Just use the scaling option to reduce both the X and Y axis to 25% in size. Still upload your image to our website for use on your business cards.
People often make the mistake of reducing an image in size in their image software only to end up with a smaller image still at 72dpi and hence throwing away the extra quality which was there.ĭon't let this scare you. If you resize the image on our website, all the data is still there, just made small and higher quality. If you only have an image off your computer which is the standard computer screen resolution of 72dpi, then you can use this image on your business card, but you will have to reduce it's size once you upload it to our site to 25% which will go from 72dpi to (4 x 72 = ) 288dpi. You must go back and rescan it at a higher resolution or take another photo at a higher resolution to obtain a better image file. Any changes you make in your software to it will not give you a higher quality image. Once your image is scanned or downloaded off your digital camera, it already has its resolution set. Open the image in your image software and go to 'Image Size' in the menus and you should be able to read it off there.Ī common mistake people make is trying to increase the resolution of an image. How do I know what resolution my image is? Where photographs reproduce best in print at 300dpi but can sneak through at 150dpi if you absolutely must but this is only if there is not any sharp lines in the image you have photographed as they will come out quite undefined. To appear crisp and sharp to the eye on a printed product, line artwork needs to be a minimum of 600dpi although you can sneak through 300dpi if you have to. All the image manipulation software also uses dpi so it has become a modern day measurement also. This is one of the old measurements which has hung around in the good old printing industry as a term 'dpi' (dots per inch). Why are we talking inches? I hear you say. That is 72 little tiny dots (pixels) are butted up against each other in a line 1 inch wide. Computer screens display at a resolution of 72dpi. Welcome to the world of image resolution.
An image which looks good on your computer screen is not necessarily good enough for printing on a business card.