Expert: Amy - 12/2/2007

Question
people often send me images/logos for newsletters and such, and they are good quality (usually .jpg files), but when i place them in illustrator and reduce them in size, the print quality of the image in the illustrator document is jagged and unclear. i have the whole cs3 suite and i use a pc.thanks.

Answer
Hi Carolyn,

I can't think of any reason this would happen other than the images are of poor quality to begin with.

Often, images look fine on screen and the lack of resolution only becomes evident when the file is printed. If you zoom the image to 200-300% and it still looks pretty good on screen, then it's probably fine for print. If you begin to see a lot of distortion/jagged edges at 200%, the resolution of the image is probably a little low for print.

People who are sending you jpegs are probably sending you 72 dpi files. This is nowhere near good enough for print. Suggest that people send you jpegs that are 3x the size you need. If you need a 1" logo, tell them 3" or 4" - then you will have the correct final resolution once resized in AI.

If you think the files are fine and that it's something you're doing wrong, we can look into it further. You can also try opening the image and resizing it in PhotoShop, then placing that into Illustrator.

If you'd like to send me a sample of what they send you, I can tell you pretty quickly if the files are high enough quality.

-Amy (AmyLynPace@yahoo.com)