Pick up a printed magazine, and look at the page closely–through a magnifying glass if you have one. What do you see, dots or solid shapes? I’ll bet the photos are all dots, and the type is all solid shapes.

To print a photo and some other graphics on a press, the image must be turned into dots. Once it’s turned into dots, it’s called rastered, rastering being the process of–you guessed it–turning it into dots. (It has to be in dots of each of the four ink colors: cyan, magenta, yellow and black.)

Vector art is artwork that has not or will not be rastered, such as type or line art or most logos. Instead, the file holds the code to “draw” the art at the size and resolution designated by the document. Vector art is most desirable when the artwork format allows it, but what about photos and art that’s already been turned into dots, like a .tif or .jpg file?

DPI is dots per inch, also referred to as resolution. Look at your magazine. Can you estimate how many dots are in an inch of your photo? Now what would happen if we had to make that photo larger–would the dots increase in density or just size? More dots is crisper than less dots, and bigger dots are least crisp of all. This is why we ask for your photo images to be at 300 dpi at final size–the size at which the image will be printed. Any more dpi and the file size will be cumbersome; any less than 240 dpi and the final product is compromised.

Confused? Remember–we’re here to help.