Higher Resolution for Printing

With the release of TNT v. 2.0 the EC Software screenshot program has become a serious application in its own right, so it was high time that it was given its own forum!

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lcoddington
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Higher Resolution for Printing

Unread post by lcoddington »

I am including some screen shots in some printed advertising. My graphic artist tells me that I need to produce them in at least 300 dpi. Is there anyway to do this with TNT? I've tried different screen resolutions, but the resulting TIF is always 96dpi.

Thanks.

- Lane Coddington
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Tim Green
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Re: Higher Resolution for Printing

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Lane,

You can change the setting for the screenshot file in most graphics programs, even after it is created. The DPI setting is only really relevant for creating images on devices like scanners, where you are really telling the scanner how many dots per inch to resolve when it is scanning an existing image. Unless you resize it, a screenshot is always a 1:1 scale copy of the dots on your monitor, and if your monitor has 96 dots per inch that is what you will get. The only way to get a genuinely higher resolution would be to make the objects on your screen bigger before you create the screenshot -- which may not be possible -- so that the image physically has more dots per inch. However, the only monitor I am aware of offhand that has anything approaching a 300dpi raster is the iPhone 4. There may be some specialized graphics editing monitors like that, but they have five-digit prices.

You can set the DPI setting on the screenshot files to anything you like but it won't affect the quality of the image in any way. Higher DPI settings will only result in smaller images on output devices that evaluate the setting and then translate it into a physical image size.
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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David Makulec
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Re: Higher Resolution for Printing

Unread post by David Makulec »

Tim's answer is essentially correct -- assuming you don't want to resample the image in your graphics program of choice.

If you stick with the originally-captured pixels, the DPI (more accurately PPI -- pixels per inch) setting will merely change the size of the image on a "printed" page (well, except in H&M-generated PDFs, which completely ignore the PPI settings associated with an image). A higher DPI without resampling will make a physically smaller image on the printed page.

If you *are* willing to resample -- rather than resize -- your image, there is always the possibility of losing clarity, since the graphics programs must "manufacture" pixels that did not exist before.

But if you, for instance, quadruple the pixel count (say, resample a 96ppi image to a 384ppi image, or a 72ppi image to a 288ppi image) the program can, at least theoretically, "divide" each existing pixel into 16 identical pixels (a 4x4 grid of pixels where only one existed before).

This should result in no loss of clarity, and then there would be 16 times as many pixels, allowing for a higher printed DPI without reducing the size of the image as much on the printed page.

Again: 1) Make more pixels by exactly multiplying the DPI/PPI value when re*sampling*; then 2) re*size* -- without resampling -- as needed by adjusting the DPI/PPI value as needed to get the printed size you want.

CAVEATS: In all the above -- which really only applies to screen captures, as opposed to, say, photographic images -- make sure you are *not* using a "lossy" compression format, like JPG. Also, there are issues on the printer's side (paper type, press type, dot gain, linescreen etc.) that are beyond the scope of this forum. And none of the above should be done for any output created by H&M, where it will either be ignored (in PDF) or be useless (HTML or Web Help).
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Tim Green
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Re: Higher Resolution for Printing

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi David,

I concur 100% with everything you say. 8)
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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lcoddington
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Re: Higher Resolution for Printing

Unread post by lcoddington »

Thank you both, that helps a lot.
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