The correct procedure for making a brochure

[Reza_Saheban@adobeforums.com]

The correct procedure for making a brochure

Hi.
I'm searching for the best way to make a brochure. Please see if my way is the best and share your print experience with me.
I think a vector environment is the best. First I make my material in FH (Freehand) (or Illustrator or Corel) then if I need any picture or effect I make it in PS (Photoshop) and save it as TIF and import that TIF into FH (or other vector applications) and finally give that FH (or Illustrator or Corel) to Lithographer.
1. Is it the best choice?
2. When I save something from PS as TIF, where can I change dpi? Which dpi is best? 300,600 or …
3. When I print something made in PS like text because the output of PS is not Vector the text doesn't appear as smooth as what we can have in FH,illustrator etc, therefore I think we should make all the text and material in FH (Illustrator or Corel) unless we need some sort of effect that FH, illustrator (etc) can't give use, then we have to use PS but we know that the TIF output wont be as good as FH. Am I right?

Regards
Reza Saheban

[Reza Saheban]

Hi.
I'm searching for the best way to make a brochure. Please see if my way is the
best and share your print experience with me.
I think a vector environment is the best. First I make my material in FH
(Freehand) (or Illustrator or Corel) then if I need any picture or effect I
make it in PS (Photoshop) and save it as TIF and import that TIF into FH (or
other vector applications) and finally give that FH (or Illustrator or Corel)
to Lithographer.
1. Is it the best choice?
2. When I save something from PS as TIF, where can I change dpi? Which dpi is
best? 300,600 or ?
3. When I print something made in PS like text because the output of PS is not
Vector the text doesn't appear as smooth as what we can have in FH, therefore I
think we should make all the text and material in FH (Illustrator or Corel)
unless we need some sort of effect that FH (etc) can't give use, then we have
to use PS but we know that the TIF output wont be as good as FH. Am I right?

Regards
Reza Saheban

[BobHill@adobeforums.com]

Reza,

If your are asking about the "best," then look to a object document producing program, such as Adobe's InDesign (or PageMaker) then use both Illustrator and PhotoShop for the appropriate type of graphics you'd need to make this "very best". A layout program is multi-paged and multi-sided designed, while vector graphic programs such as those you indicated are best at graphics, but not best for text and publishing layout. Not that it can't be done in Illustrator (or CorelDraw and Freehand), but you asked for the "best" way.

Bob

[LenHewitt@adobeforums.com]

Reza,

>>When I save something from PS as TIF, where can I change dpi? >>

Image>image size is where you will re-size images, but re-sampling images
will always lead to some loss of quality

>>Which dpi is best? 300,600 <

For offset printing, assuming CMYK images, 240 ppi is normally quite
sufficient, 300 ppi is more than necessary and 600 ppi would be total
overkill for anything other than bi-level bitmaps.

[chuckrock]

Yup. You're right.
Try to leave everything vector as much as possible. Do everything to your
photos in Photoshop. If your type requires fuzzy shadows/glows do it in
Photoshop.
300 dpi is pretty much the going standard. If your entire page including type
is done in Photoshop for whatever reason (Pictures fading into text for
example) you may have to bump it up to 600dpi (before you start designing) to
make the type remain crisp.

As a standard rule: Figure out what LINE PER INCH you're printing at and
double the resolution. 150 lpi = 300 dpi.

For brochures, FreeHand is a good choice. Just make sure that your color
management is setup for four-color process.
Quark is the major player, but I prefer InDesign to the two. Illustrator and
Corel will work just as good for brochure purposes, but you may have a few
problems getting a print house that can easily handle Corel files.

Hope this helps.

[Reza_Saheban@adobeforums.com]

Thanks, but for dpi I should open a document, select CMYK and change Resolution to 600. Is that correct? Can I use 600 for all my print works?

[Reza Saheban]

Thanks for the reply.
1. If I want to put my vector work from FH or Illustrator into InDesign,
Should I copy and paste it from vector application (FH, AI) into InDesign or
anything else ?! (Can I import *.FH11 or illustrator main format into InDesign?
2. For importing a TIF made in PS, If I make a new picture from scratch, when
I open a document I enter 600 for Pixels/inch, is that correct generally for
print media?
3. And If I have a picture with low dpi, resample it as 600 Pixels/inch (In
PS: image> image size and change resolution from anything low to 600,is that
correct?
4. There are 3 kinds of "resample" in PS which one is ok?
(At the end I'll save it as TIF for FH)

[Danny Whitehead]

Reza Saheban wrote:

> Thanks for the reply.
> 1. If I want to put my vector work from FH or Illustrator into InDesign,
> Should I copy and paste it from vector application (FH, AI) into InDesign or
> anything else ?! (Can I import *.FH11 or illustrator main format into InDesign?

You can copy and paste vector art from Freehand into InDesign (using
Copy Special>EPS For Photoshop 4/5 - colours will be converted to RGB),
but depending on what it is, it's often better to use Quark XPress EPS
of Freehand art (keeping your original native FH file) and Illustrator
EPS or native AI. You can't import native FHMX format into InDesign, but
you can import native Illustrator.

> 2. For importing a TIF made in PS, If I make a new picture from scratch, when
> I open a document I enter 600 for Pixels/inch, is that correct generally for
> print media?

300ppi, or 2x the halftone screen frequency (lpi) is the usual
'standard'. Chuck recommended 600ppi if you were going to be creating a
lot of text in Photoshop, to provide more detail.

> 3. And If I have a picture with low dpi, resample it as 600 Pixels/inch (In
> PS: image> image size and change resolution from anything low to 600,is that
> correct?

Not really, you can't pull information out of thin air, so upsampling is
just stretching the info you already have without making any more
detail. When I get an image in, I'll generally change the resolution to
300ppi (if that's what I'm working to) WITHOUT resampling. That way,
when I bring it into the layout, I know roughly what I can get away with.

> 4. There are 3 kinds of "resample" in PS which one is ok?
> (At the end I'll save it as TIF for FH)

Depends which way you're going, but you're almost always better off with
one of the bicubic options. Bicubic Sharper is wonderful for
downsampling images. If you really, really, really have to upsample,
Bicubic Smoother might help.

--


Danny

[Reza Saheban]

Thank you. But could you tell me what is the usage of "Resampling"?
If you say that I can open a picture with low dpi (of course if I have to) and
uncheck "Resample" and increase ppi to 300 or 600,then what is the difference
of resampling and not resampling ? In other words, When should I resample a
picture and when shouldn't I?

[LenHewitt@adobeforums.com]

Reza,

Are you talking about Photoshop here?

>>Can I use 600 for all my print works<<

No, as I said before that is much too high a ppi for images. 240 ppi should
be quite sufficient.

[Jonathan_McClintic@adobeforums.com]

Reza,

If what you already do works for the printer, and you are happy with the results you get back, then there might not be much to change. Otherwise stick with Bob and Len's suggestions. You might also try saving from Photoshop as a PS file if your graphic has transparency in it. Also, the text is vector in a PS file untill it is placed into another program, so if you were doing the whole thing in PS then saving as a PS would be my suggestion, of course then you would either have to rasterize the text or make sure the printer had it.

Jonathan

PS. Not much help over in the FreeHand forum?

[Odysseus]

In article <cberos$bmm$1@forums.macromedia.com>,
"Reza Saheban" <webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote:

> Thank you. But could you tell me what is the usage of "Resampling"?
> If you say that I can open a picture with low dpi (of course if I have to)
> and
> uncheck "Resample" and increase ppi to 300 or 600,then what is the difference
> of resampling and not resampling ? In other words, When should I resample a
> picture and when shouldn't I?

If "Resample" is unchecked, essentially all you're doing is resizing the
rulers -- the pixels in the file remain identical, just mapped
differently onto the coordinate system. You may have noticed that
resizing without resampling happens more or less instantly, and any
current selection remains active. OTOH resampling involves recalculating
the colour value of every pixel in the image, and any selection is
discarded because the original pixels no longer exist.

For a typical photo that's intended for output using 150 lpi screens, I
generally won't resample it if its resolution is between about 200 and
300 ppi, at the size at which it'll be printed. But this decision
depends on various factors, principally my judgement of the image's
sharpness and amount of detail.

--
Odysseus

[Danny Whitehead]

Reza Saheban wrote:

> Thank you. But could you tell me what is the usage of "Resampling"?
> If you say that I can open a picture with low dpi (of course if I have to) and
> uncheck "Resample" and increase ppi to 300 or 600,then what is the difference
> of resampling and not resampling ? In other words, When should I resample a
> picture and when shouldn't I?

If you take an image that would print 5"x 5" at 150ppi (too low), and
change the resolution to 300ppi (your intended resolution) *without*
resampling, you now have an image that would print at 2.5"x 2.5". If you
change the resolution to 300ppi *with* resampling (upsampling), you'll
still have a 5"x 5", but you won't gain any more real detail.

My usual practice: I receive images of varying resolution for a job. I
make them all my final intended resolution *without* resampling. When I
bring them into the layout, I know how large they can be used without
having to upsample (well, no more than about 130%). They'll usually end
up being reduced in size. When the layout is finalised, I'll mark up all
the percentages the images have been resized to in the layout on a
proof. Then I'll open them up in Photoshop, resample them to final size
(probably using 'bicubic sharper', as they'll almost always be
downsampled), so I have images at final print size at final resolution.
I'll sharpen them using the Unsharp Mask filter (another technique
you'll benefit from learning), convert to CMYK if needed, and save a
copy of each into a new 'final images' folder. I'll then go back into
the layout and swap each linked image to the final one, and make them
100%. I'll usually archive both the final images and the original ones.

--


Danny

[Danny Whitehead]

I just came across this thread on the Adobe forums:
[url]http://www.adobeforums.com/cgi-bin/webx?13@145.8sygc2fwJ1t.1995598@.3bb45931/38[/url]

It contains a wealth of knowledge beyond mine on the subject of resolution.

--


Danny

[Ken Kehl]

On Thu, 24 Jun 2004 12:56:44 +0000 (UTC), "Reza Saheban"
<webforumsuser@macromedia.com> wrote:

> 1. If I want to put my vector work from FH or Illustrator into InDesign,
> Should I copy and paste it from vector application (FH, AI) into InDesign or
> anything else ?! (Can I import *.FH11 or illustrator main format into InDesign?

Export your vector artwork from FH as EPS, with fonts embedded. That
will preserve the sharpness and resolution independence of the vectors
and text. An EPS may also contain raster images, however I prefer to
import them separately when possible.

> 2. For importing a TIF made in PS, If I make a new picture from scratch, when
> I open a document I enter 600 for Pixels/inch, is that correct generally for
> print media?

300 is generally fine for general print work. Placing a 600 ppi color
TIFF in a document that will be printed with 150 lpi screens will not
really buy you any increased final detail. This is because the
screening process will kill any additional sharpness you might have
gained. In the meantime, you have produced a file 4x the size of a 300
ppi file.

Bitmap (black and white) TIFFs are a different story. They are
generally created at the resolution of the output device, or 1200 ppi,
whichever is lower.

> 3. And If I have a picture with low dpi, resample it as 600 Pixels/inch (In
> PS: image> image size and change resolution from anything low to 600,is that
> correct?

Resampling and resizing are strange concepts. I say strange, because
once you 'get it', it will seem so simple and make perfect sense, but
up until that point it seems very complicated.

You can't resample an image 'upward' (300 ppi ---> 600 ppi) and make
it contain more detail, since the additional pixels are simply
interpreted from existing data. If you really need a 600 ppi file for
some reason, you need to create it with at least that much resolution
to begin with. Resampling in Photoshop is akin to stretching or
shrinking an image on the page in FreeHand. Notice that if you grab
the corner of a TIFF in FH and stretch it to 2x or 4x the size, the
effective resolution (pixels per inch) is decreased? That's because
each pixel is now printing twice or 4x as large on the paper. Not
good.

When trying to figure out how resampling and resizing work, it helps
to think of the image in terms of how many pixels you have to work
with. If you have a 1" square image at 300 ppi, it consists of 300
pixels x 300 pixels.

If you *resize* it to 150 ppi in PS, it's still 300 x 300 pixels, but
it will import at 2" square on the FH page because you have "told" the
image to print only 150 pixels to every inch of paper. This is
essentially the same as stretching it larger with Freehand.

If you *resample* it to 150 ppi in PS, then you have thrown away 3/4
of the image data, and the image is now only 150 pixels x 150 pixels.
Notice that its print size is still 1" though - this means that it
will print with less detail.
______
Ken
ellipsis design
(remove the _xx_'s)