Calendar Printing: Optimizing your Print Resolution in 7 Wa

Make your life easier by preparing your files long before printing. Doing this earlier for your prints – be it for business card printing or calendar printing - can save you and the printing company from unwanted troubles or delays.

Although print companies do their best to give you the best quality print jobs, only good quality images will result to high quality prints. Like almost everything in technology, printers work under the principle of “garbage in, garbage out”. It will only give you back what you give it.
Poor quality images can be avoided with a few quick reminders that will help you with your calendar printing experience. Get your file print ready by adhering to the following guidelines.

Print Resolution:

Low resolution is a problem with the majority of file submission to printers. Although discerning high resolution and low resolution is relative from print job to print job, it is better to err in the side of caution. Making the mistake of having a resolution too high is better than making the mistake of having a low one.

1. Choose the correct file format. When saving a work in progress, use a file format that retains your resolution. Programs often use their own proprietary file formats, for example, Photoshop uses .PSD.

2. A non-specific file format that has good data retention is the .Tiff. Another lossless file is .PES. Both of this will retain your original pixel information so your image are saved in the best conditions.

3. When you have to save in .JPEG, avoid doing so until you are done with working on the image. (There is a data loss from compression every time you save with .JPEG) And always choose the highest compression.

4. Dpi and pixels are units of measurement that will give you an idea how big the file is in terms of two things: 1. the sharpness of the image and size it fits best into 2. And the concentration of dots or pixels in a given area to capture the necessary color or detail of an image.

5. Although interpolation can help improve print quality of some image to a certain degree, it is will NOT guarantee good prints. Interpolated images do NOT create new data. When you stretch a limited set of data over a large area, you will still get a low resolution print.

6. If you want to use your own picture or if you plan to capture images for your calendars, make sure you use the right resolution. If you want a rich image, say an 8 x 10 picture to be laid out in your 8.5 x 11 calendars, you would need a 1600x2000 pixels.

7. Always be aware of resizing your pictures. Blowing them up or enlarging them can still mess up the resolution. Stick to a 300dpi for your prints whenever you send you file to your printer.

Again, these are general rule of thumb for printing. Resolution varies from image to image, and print to print. Trust your judgment. But when in doubt, call your printing company for suggestions. They are qualified to help you through printing.