Expert: Glen Demers - 5/27/2010

Question
Im not sure if i posted this in the right section. I had trouble finding experts. I dont use photoshop much. I designed some business cards for a friend in photobucket and scrapblog using photos and text. I was wondering if i need to resize the photos before printing... what software or program would be best for printing them? Thanks, Jamie

Answer
Hi Jamie,

For professional printing, InDesign and QuarkXpress are the industry leaders in page layout software. There are less expensive alternatives like PagePlus, Publisher for Windows and PageStream, but to produce a document that is to be printed you'll need a page layout program to design the pages, set text and link to your images and graphics. If you have the copy and images and don't wish to purchase software for a single job, most printers are able to take your materials and produce a layout for your approval, prior to printing. They will charge for this since your materials are not "camera-ready".

Photos for offset reproduction generally need to be of a higher resolution than web images, genarally in the range of 200 - 300 dpi. For a detailed discussion of resolution go to this page: http://www.bestprintingonline.com/resolution.htm

I'm not familiar with either of the websites you mentioned so I don't know if they would allow you to export your work in a usable format, but a visit to our help center may answer many questions you may have about printing: http://www.bestprintingonline.com/printing-help.htm

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

For more Photoshop tips please visit our help pages here: http://www.bestprintingonline.com/photoshop.htm