I am in the process of making a cover page for a convention, i can make the cover in Photoshop, but the only problem is, i am not sure on how to print, like quality, dimensions and everything else, let me get the dimensions, but in the meanwhile can anyone please help me on finding out what is a good resolution for the print page? it is supposed to be the size of a standard printing paper.
What can i make the dimensions? ? X ?
Thank you 
I’ve searched for this in the forums, but nobody answered the last person who asked this question.
just huge the greatest resolution you can ie not a screen resolution (by that i mean an image that will fit while being at a 100% in your PS window) you might want to use something like 3000xSomething, depends on your ram…
(if it’s legal size then multiply the default PS resolution by 4 at least)
As for printing, either go to a printer shop (or whatever it’s called) to print it with a laser printer, or use some paper photo with the best resolution on an inkjet…
Thanks, what should i make the dimensions for the PS document?
Thanks for the help Mlk, this would be a great question for ElectronGeek, i think he used to work at a Print Studio? Anyway, thanks for your help Mlk, i’ll see what i can do with this. (-:
i would SERIOUSLY recomend not using photoshop. if you can, use illustrator. Printing from photoshop is pretty advanced…i wouldn’t recomend it to someone new to printing.
Normally when you take it to a professional printer, they will take your art work from photoshop, convert it to a 4 color process or spot color or even a 2 color process then they usually print it from a layout program like quark express.
If you’re just printing this from home then I suggest working with 300 dpi or higher and set the color mode to CMYK and not RGB.
Also avoid using images from the internet because they’re only 72 dpi. If you must grab stuff from the internet, make sure the images are atleast wallpaper size to prevent a poor quality print.
that’s what i pointed out. Besides - if you are into serious printing there is a whole lot of configuartions to do to PS… Your screen (most of the time) won’t provide the correct print colors - you have to buy some wierd color detector and apply it to your screen. There are also a range of unprintable colors on your docs depending on your printer… i think there are options in PS to check 'em out…
Yeah colors on the monitor sreen is RGB which is light. When Red, Green and Blue light are set to 100% each, they produce White. 0% each will produce Black.
For print, you usually deal with CMYK which is Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black.
People who are unaware of this will wonder why the design they created looks different on the monitor than on the printed piece.
There’s also other things like spot color and you’re dealing with pantone colors, but I won’t get into that.
PHOTOSHOP PRINTING
Low End Printer:
I do a lot of printing through photoshop - and it depends on the printer that I’m printing to on how I get the most out of the image that I’m printing. If I’m printing to a standard printer I make sure that my image has a resolution of 300 dpi, I don’t worry about converting to CMYK, and then I open up another window or whatever you call 'em and I set my dimensions at 7.5 inches by 7.5 inches, my resolution at 133. I then copy merge my other opened window and paste it into the large 7.5 x 7.5 inch window and resize. It shouldn’t matter too much if you have to resize it to a larger size because its a 300 dpi image coming into a 133 dpi screen. The 133 dpi is the best resolution for low end printers and its gets the most out of your line usage in the way it prints. This also avoids taxing the memory and loads it quickly so it can print it.
High End Printer:
If you have to, and its happened to me before, that you have to print to a large scale printer…or you just have to make the file for a client that’s going to take it to the printer then you have to follow these following steps to make things easier for both you and the printer (or guy that’s printing it)…
Convert to CMYK
Resolution 300 dpi or higher
Verify your colors on swatches (I’ve had projects come back with nasty colors just because I didn’t verify what color I chose)
Make sure that all the CMYK colors are printable in CMYK (similar issue)
Put the fonts on a the same cd as the file, or separate disk - (some printers don’t have the same fonts that you use)
Make the window size that your working on to scale - in other words…if your printing a poster sized image then make sure you do the measurements
Don’t forget about the bleeding to edges - you might want to make sure that if you want to bleed color over - that it bleeds over, or if you don’t want it to bleed over - that it doesn’t bleed over.
Last thing - even if you don’t know what your doing…never let 'em see you pee your pants.
dont use photoshop for text. Use illustrator and turn the fonts into outlines.
Thanks for your expertise everyone, this should help me very much, I recommend this thread for the Best of KirupaForums.
Can somebody please write a tutorial on printing a cover letter =) This would be great for those of us who are lost when it comes to printing. (I’m still a little lost). It would be very very helpful :beam: Thanks for all of your help! :A+:
Take into consideration that printing should be done somewhere professional
