Expert: Amy - 3/16/2006

Question
Hello Amy,

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
Hello Gale!

The resolution/file format of the scanned image is key, here.  Bitmaps don't display well on screen.

True Line Art should be scanned as Line Art (B/W, bitmap mode) but a vintage image might have a lot of character that you want to preserve - that gets lost in Line Art mode. However, the size and detail of the ad may force you to use Line Art Mode.

In the case that you prefer to scan it as line art, you'll need to create two scans. A 300 dpi jpeg (grayscale, with little or no compression) for the client's preview and an 800 - 1200+ dpi B/W bitmap to be popped in to replace the preview image before you go to print.

If the ad has "character" that you'd like to preserve, I would take it down to about a 300 dpi grayscale and save it as a TIFF. Make sure it prints all right scanned like that and use the same image for preview and print.

Clients.... you gotta please 'em.

-Amy Pace