Thread: Hanging Basket
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Unread 08-19-2014, 08:08 AM
Sharon Passmore Sharon Passmore is offline
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Join Date: Oct 2002
Location: Greenville, SC
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If the canvas is a disappointment, just don't think of it as the end result, think of it as the first step. Luckily, you ordered canvas. This means you can paint on it, embroider on it, glue onto it etc... If the resolution is pixely, whip out the paintbrushes.

The PPI thing...you see, all printed images are made of only 4 colors - CMYK - Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black. Its just simply impossible to have a toner color for every green in a photo of a forest, or for every pink in your piece. Can you imagine the quantity of toner cartridges your printer would have? It would be the size of a moving van. LOL On a printing press using ink that would be thousands of runs. No way.

For computer screens and TVs it's only 3 colors RGB Red Green Blue. This is for the same reason - every inch of a 72 PPI monitor has to have 72 points of red green and blue light. I don't know if the same light can change color or if there are actually 216 tiny light bulbs. And this is 72 PPI across and down - the square inch has 5184 points.

So, here's what a print piece looks like magnified ~


What you need to know as an artist is:
*Reducing images makes them look better - enlarging images makes them look worse.
*The basic ranges of PPI or DPI quality.
*Print mode is CMYK and screen mode is RGB and they don't translate well. Convert to CMYK for printing. (I'm sure everone has printed a picture off the computer and it looked fantastic on the screen but the print looked dull?)
*Start big and make a smaller copy for the computer, FaceBook, bulletin boards etc...If you post a 3000 pixel thing online, the computer is reducing it anyway and it takes long to load. 600 pixels wide is a nice size to fit threads at Eratosphere.
*Digital images have pixels for their size because everything on the computer is stretchy. Size doesn't mean size as we know it in inches and feet. Computer size is pixels and also memory size, megs, kilobytes whatever. For example Hanging Basket is 633PPI, 2.11" and 14" and so on. You have to figure out the print size by doing math *gasp*. I hate math but there is it.
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