PLAYING WITH THE COLOR AND IMAGE
Does your image appear good on the screen, but looks blurred, jagged or fuzzy when you print it?
To clearly see the difference of the quality of image on screen and on print, take an image from the internet. Zoom it out or make it larger. Can you see how series of little squares appear on the image? Try to print it and you’ll see that the color will fade. There will be a change in the resolution.
Resolution is, basically, the sharpness or crispness of an image. When an image is shrunk, the color looks lively. When you blow it or enlarge it, the color will fade and the image will look unclear.
Resolution is defined as the number of pixels contained in the monitor. Pixel, from the words “picture element”, is the basic unit of programmable color in a computer image. The resolution is measured by the number of dots per inch (dpi), which is equal to the numbers of squares of color in an inch. A standard resolution for an image should be 300dpi and 400dpi for images containing text.
The resolution of an image is inversely proportional to the size of the image. In other words, when you increase the size of the image the resolution decreases, and vice versa. For example, if you enlarge an image, the size, of course, increases. But the quality or sharpness of the image decreases, giving you a blurred image.
When you extract images from the internet,
most probably, you will have a poor quality image. Internet images are mostly saved in GIF or JPEG file format, which only consumes 72dpi. The purpose of saving image files on this resolution is to make the image easy to extract. Meaning, these images are not for print use.
Scanners, digital camera, computer monitor and other display devices use the RGB (red, green, blue) color mode, while in the printing process CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black) color mode is used. Meaning, you have to expect change in the color of the image when you print it. To reduce the problem, you must convert your image from RGB to CMYK. There are image editing programs that offer color conversion, such as Photoshop or Corel PhotoPaint.
Do not expect to get good images from the internet. You must resort to other sources like real photos or pictures from magazines. When you scan, compare the size of the photo to the size of your layout. If the photo is larger than your layout, scanning at 300dpi is enough. If it is smaller, adjust your scanner’s resolution setting and percentage size. If there are texts over the image, lighten the image so the text will be readable. If you do not know how create good prints, you can resort to a printing press.
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