Creating images

Graphic artists know they must create pleasing and informative graphics, but not everyone is a graphic artist. Nowadays, there are lots of places, including the internet, to get graphics and images for your book. You can either find free graphics online, which are not always the best quality, or you can purchase them from a graphic artist. Be imaginative and resourceful. Perhaps a friend dabbles in art and they can create some graphics for you. Or maybe you can have us create them for you.

Always change the position, size, and resolution of an image before you import them into a page layout application

If you need to rotate or resize an image, it is best to do so in the image creation application, instead of the page layout application. By the time you import images into the page layout application, they should be in the position and size that you want them to appear in the final book. If you import an image into your page layout application and believe it should be shrunk more than 10%, you should rescan or recreate it in the correct resolution to maintain image quality.

The pixel resolution of your image is an important consideration. You should create images with the correct resolution. Traditionally, the pixel resolution should normally be 300dpi when printed at 100%. You should always create or scan images at the chosen resolution, instead of working from a lower resolution image.

Always supply clean images

Graphic creation applications can add extraneous objects to an image file. These objects can create faults, which then causes problems in the page layout application, imposition software, RIPs and other print shop applications. So when you create JPG or TIFF images, you should remove unnecessary objects or data attributes from the file. For example, if an image contains multiple layers, flatten the layers before saving the image. Some applications will flatten the images for you.

There are two types of image compression technologies: lossy and lossless. Conventional LZW compression is lossless, which does not degrade image quality. JPEG compression, on the other hand, is lossy, which removes data from the image in order to compress it. In which case, the changes to the image may or may not be visible to the human eye, so examine the image once printed and, if you see a degradation, use a lossless compression method. JPEG-compressed TIFF images may not be readable in certain desktop applications or digital printers. If you are concerned about the size of an image file, use high resolution 300dpi JPGs images in your page layout application.

 

When creating images for books, consider how the book will be printed, bound and trimmed

If you are creating images for a book, some of your design decisions can add difficulty to the printing, binding, and trimming processes. When creating an image that will bleed off all sides of a page, it should be exactly the same size that the book will be after it is trimmed. But don't forget to leave a 3 mm margin on every edge that will be trimmed or milled. Otherwise, the book will end up with a white border on each edge.

Do not add information marks to the image from the image creation application. These information marks will be added during imposition. If the marks are in the actual image and, for some reason, you need to change the image later in the production process, you will have to recreate the image and run the book through the entire process again.

Proof the images

Once you have resized your images and converted them to CMYK, you should verify them. You may need to tune the CMYK separations to get the colour just right. Proofing the images while you are still creating the book may save time later when the book is being printed. For example, if one of your images is not converted to CMYK, we may have to put a hold on your job until you or we fix the image.