Photographs and scanned images

Please make sure your photographic images are saved at a resolution of 300dpi at the final dimensions you want to use them. Please be aware that size and resolution are inversely proportional, so that enlarging an image decreases its resolution. If images are saved at 300dpi you may safely enlarge them by up to 15%.

Please be aware that most images on the internet are 72 dpi and will result in very poor quality printing. Resampling these images in Photoshop will not improve them. You can, however, reduce the dimensions of such images in order to obtain a higher resolution, ideally 300 dpi.

PDF documents (Portable Document files)

The first rule in preparing PDF files for commercial print (as opposed to preparing them for email or the web) is to use Acrobat Distiller as your PDF-generating engine. Acrobat Distiller is part of the Adobe Acrobat Standard and Professional software packages. Acrobat Standard is sometimes bundled with your computer system. Acrobat Standard and Professional can both be purchased online from the Adobe web site (http://www.adobe.com).

The first step in preparing a PDF file with Acrobat Distiller is to generate a PostScript file from your page layout or graphics program. The PostScript file is then processed through Acrobat Distiller to generate the final, print-ready PDF file. This method to save PDFs for commercial print is generally more reliable than using your program's built-in Export-to-PDF or Save-As-PDF function.