Chapter 4 & 5

Chapter 4

Chapter 4 starts talking about ancient times before pixels was even created and about how now its all about pixels when it comes to taking pictures with digital cameras. Pixels are the the tiny specs or dots that makes up an image. Without it we wouldn't have pictures or videos without them. If we did the pictures and movies wouldn't turn out near as good that it should be. JPEG is a compressed format that is delivered by a regular point and shoot camera. Professional digital cameras makes images into the Camera RAW format, has hardly any compression to it compared to a JPEG image. RAW images can be opened quickly into Photoshop and saved into other formats easier than a JPEG image. One big difference between the two is that RAW images take up more space on your computer and on your memory card than a JPEG does. RAW is also very flexible to work with. The chapter than goes on talking about all the Adobe Photoshop programs like Adobe Photoshop elements and Adobe Lightroom. Ppi is pixels per inch and its the resolution of an image. For websites, web images are used at 72 ppi at the final size. According to the Print Production book, "They are strongly held regarding the appropriate image resolution for printing." I learned from the book that 300 ppi image would be lost in a newspaper. The chapter then introduces bitmap images, which are sometimes referred to as line art images because the images contain black and white pixels with no shades of gray. Bitmap scans can provide a crisp clear image when it's scanned at a high resolution as well. It still produces small file sizes too.

After this the chapter goes on talking about scaling up and down then leads to planning ahead so you won't screw anything up on the scaling part of an assignment. Digital photographs are talked about next, which leads to our next topic, which is cropping and rotating images. Cropping should occur when you're saving an image or when you first to scan an image. If you are not sure you want to crop an image then it can always wait til later just as long as you save it so it don't become lost. Rotating images requires interpolation of pixel information. The safest rotations are 90 degrees. If you do anything else it will result in softening the detail of the image. Don't be afraid to crop or edit a picture just make sure its yours not some one else's or you will break copyright laws. The next part our chapter talks about is the image formats you can use when printing. The most commonly used files used to print are TIFF (tagged image file format) and EPS (encapsulated PostScript). They now say that some PSD (Photoshop document) is more flexible to work with than it used to be. TIFF is the most widely supported file format. I know when I have to turn photos in for the Kanza Yearbook, it has to be a TIFF file. PDF can also a good format for printing as well. Screen captures is then discussed and then talks about how to convert them to CMYK. RGB is then compared to CMYK and the differences between them, which was discussed in a previous blog I believe. The last part the chapter talks about is the files that aren't the greatest to print. Portable Network Graphics (PNG), BMP (bitmap), Graphics Interchange Format (GIF), and JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) are the files that are not good to print. Most files are over the amount of the colors that the printer is able to print. The transparency tip talks about how certain software's do not correctly handle blending modes in a Photoshop file. An example would be like if you add a drop shadow to an image because you wouldn't see it after you brought it into InDesign or Illustrator. It would make your project look odd in other words. To make a drop shadow work the best, you need to do it in InDesign or Illustrator so you can make it look the way you want it too.


Chapter 5

A basic summary over chapter 5 is that its all about vector graphics and the formats of it. Vector graphics are pixel free. They are also not subjected to scaling restrictions either. Smooth shapes of vector drawings are usually smooth so its easier to be enlarged and reduced with nothing affecting the image. According to the Print Production book, "Since the File > Save and File > Export dialogs of popular drawing programs offer a dizzying list of prospective file types, it's important to know what's acceptable for print and what's not." The most common file format for the vector artwork used to be EPS, which is Encapsulated PostScript. The most common now is Adobe Illustrator file. When using Adobe Illustrator it is best when submitting a vector file to save it as an illustrator file not a EPS file because you can use illustrator files in other programs like Adobe InDesign. For a page-layout software file, there's really no reason to save it as a PDF. The vector formats that are not available to print are Microsoft Windows Metafile Format (WMF), Enhanced Metafile Format (EMF), and Raster Formats.

To embed fonts you can use Adobe Illustrator in either a EPS or AI file for placing it in other programs. It means the font information should be open or available to display and print. The only downside to this is that it does not allow the fonts to become available in the EPS or AI file. According to Print Production, "To edit text, you'll still need the appropriate fonts active on your system; embedding does not deliver fonts to you." It comes as a surprise to many people that not all fonts can be embedded. All fonts contain data, which is called hinting. It processes the look and printing of the text. "Converting text to outlines eliminates hinting, so text may display onscreen as of slightly bloated and will print slightly heavier on desktop printers because of the lower resolution of those devices," according to the book,  Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications by Claudia McCue. If you have something that needs to be printed on a digital press then you need to avoid outlining the text. To simply your paths in Adobe Illustrator, you need to stop clicking all over the place with the pen tool. The less points you have on an image then the smoother the image your path or image will look. It will also be easier in the end when you move your image to Adobe InDesign. It is difficult to do at first, but all it takes is practice. I know I had to do that to make a path work for me bunches of times. This is why Adobe Illustrator is considered a drawing program not a page-layout program.

All the information I learned and used in my blog was from the book, Print Production with Adobe Creative Suite Applications by Claudia McCue.