Expert: Tom Rouze - 3/16/2006

Question
Hello Tom,

I know very little about Illustrator and little more about Photoshop.

I scanned a bitmap (B/W line ad from a 1950's magazine) onto the clipbord and pasted it directly into Illustrator CS. It printed out well but looks crappy on screen. The final job is for print -- but can I get the image to look just as good on screen for the client's viewing? My monitor display is set at 1024 x 768 pixels although I do not know the client's computer setup.

If it is not asking too much, I am in a hurry for an answer...whatever you can do would be appreciated. Thank you :)

Answer
Hi Gale,
Bitmaps are a funny thing on screen.  Here's a quick answer that may work.   Make sure when you scan the piece that you scan at a high enough resolution.  If it's not too large of an area to scan try 600-1200 dpi.  1200 @ 100% is the norm for line art reproduction.  
Save the file as a JPEG in Photoshop.  See if that works.  You don't have to bring it into Illustrator to email jsut send the JPEG. If the file is too large to email, when yousave as a JPEG select a different compression setting (smaller file).

Hope this helped.  If you have any other questions please let me know.

Thank you,
Tom