Expert: Glen Demers - 10/15/2009

Question
Hello Glen,heres my question: I have an image on photshop CS3 that is ultimately going to be placed on a business card,can you tell me how I should format and save the image so that I get the best clarity as it shrinks down?

Answer
Hi Jordin,

Make sure you save your original as a tiff file, jpeg are a lossy format and the image will degrade with subsequent saves. If it's in RGB mode, leave it there. For the image to be used on a business card that'll be printing offset I would make a copy and convert to CMYK color mode then reduce image size to the size it will be on the business card at a resolution of 300 dpi. For a more detailed discussion of resolution go here: http://is.gd/4lGiJ

Once you have the image at the final size you can then apply a little sharpening. If you sharpen an image and then reduce it, the affect is lost. If you sharpen then enlarge the sharpening is also enlarged and looks bad.

Hope this helps,
Glen Demers
Adobe Certified Expert, Photoshop 7
Prepress Technician, Best Printing Online
www.bestprintingonline.com

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