Dan is absolutely correct, and I shall add my two bits.
Five of my books have been published, all by different publishers, and
they all preferred 400 or 500 dpi. I used Photoshop and Vectorworks,
the latter being a CAD program used by architects and engineers. It is
somewhat easier to use than Photoshop, especially for simple line
drawings, but both are very expensive programs.
Neal
On Jan 26, 2011, at 9:58 PM, Dan Crutcher wrote:
Stuart,
The hardest part of creating something together for print is making
sure that your images are conveyed properly. For almost all color
printing on coated paper stock, you will want your images to be at
least 300 dpi (dots per inch, sometime referred to as "ppi" - pixels
per inch) resolution at the size that they are actually going to print
and in CMYK color mode (as opposed to the RGB mode that is standard
for images displayed on computer screens).
The problem is that most standard word-processing programs, such as
Word (and presumably Pages, although I don't know enough about it to
say for sure) don't give you much control over resolution or color
mode. Which is why serious graphic design for print is usually done in
programs like QuarkXPress, InDesign, Illustrator or Photoshop.
Having said that, most commercial printers are used to converting
files from programs that aren't really meant to output high-res press-
ready documents, so the best bet if you don't have a true page layout
program is to ask whoever is printing the program what their preferred
formats are. They may prefer to have you send them a mockup done in a
word-processor, but then to get the hi-res images and text separately
so that they can use their own processes to put them together in the
best way.
Dan
Hi all,
I want to put together a professional looking ad for a playbill, but
I'm not a designer! Are there any simple programs out there that
can make my text and images look wonderful? Perhaps template
based. I would, of course, prefer a free or inexpensive program.
Any thoughts/help greatly appreciated!
Stuart
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