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web images no good?

djsound

djsound

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Dec 4, 2006
791
17
Hey everyone. I used to do graphics for work many years ago but quit for a long time...Now I have recently had the urge to create hehe...what I'm wondering is if anyone can recommend a good place for images..I see such beautiful images in graphic design these days...Do most people take thier own photos? Im for sure not a photographer....IMages you find on the internet are useless right since they are only about 72 dpi?? Or has something changed since i quit? Im trying to make a little brochure just for fun but if I print it out with 72 dpi images it will look bad right? Or is there anything these days that can fix that? thanks
 
The "standard" for web is 72 but the standard for print is much higher.

You can try printing and see how it looks...
 
well ya, back in the day standard for what we did in print was 300 dpi.....if you printed something that was 72 it would look terrible
 
djsound said:
well ya, back in the day standard for what we did in print was 300 dpi.....if you printed something that was 72 it would look terrible
Click to expand...

You can use any image editing software, like photoshop, to change the dpi of your images.
 
hehe ya i know that. But if you change a 72 dpi image to 300 it will shrink and be unusable in your creation
 
djsound said:
well ya, back in the day standard for what we did in print was 300 dpi.....if you printed something that was 72 it would look terrible
Click to expand...

It seems you're answering your own questions...

And I think if you changed an image dpi from 72 to 300 the image gets bigger.
 
If you try to Res-up an image from 72 to 300, it becomes too small because it is trying to add information that it just doesn't have - so it just forces 72 dots into 300 which shrinks it. Trying to take any picture and up the resolution is near impossible to make it look good with out some serious work. Most people may either hire a professional photographer or skip the middle man and buy royalty free stock photography.

If you are making the brochure for a company, you can get them to buy stock photography from:
www.istockphoto.com
www.gettyimages.com

However, if you are creating the brochure for personal reasons and want free images, this site is the only one that I have found that offers free, high-res royalty free images.
www.sxc.hu

Welcome back to the design world =)
 
I knew that when you took a 72 dpi and made it into a 300 it does what you said. But then how come the the resolution (pixels) goes up? Maybe we're talking about the same thing but using different verbiage.
 
Accccccctually..

72dpi for OSX, and 96 DPI for Windoze.

BUT, don't let DPI confuse you. DPI is print term and is used only when the images is being printed. You can put a 10dpi image on your website and it would display the same as a 150dpi image. Apples to oranges.

I use 72dpi when saving for web :)
 
Piercey said:
I knew that when you took a 72 dpi and made it into a 300 it does what you said. But then how come the the resolution (pixels) goes up? Maybe we're talking about the same thing but using different verbiage.
Click to expand...

No. An image changed from 72 dpi to 300 dpi will simply shrink. If you are looking at your ps resize box and watching the pixels go up when you change this setting, try punching the original pixel dimensions back in after changing the DPI and watch the dimensions shrink. You shouldn't just upscale photos like that.
 
Ya im talking about for print.

as the last guy said (sorry cant see your name hehe)...when changing down from 300 dpi to 72 the reason it looks better is its more compressed. I know these things...I used to do print work. But I was just wondering if there is some new tool to upgrade from 72 dpi images to 300 for print. Something maybe similar to 'progressive dvd players'...

p.s. thanks for the welcome back to the graphics world...maybe we can share some stuff we've done..to see what we do.
 
Not to mention if you go to stock photo sites, their images are like 3500 px by 2300 px @ 72 dpi, but change that to 300dpi and you get an excellent print quality image at 8" x 11"

But I was just wondering if there is some new tool to upgrade from 72 dpi images to 300 for print. Something maybe similar to 'progressive dvd players'
Click to expand...
The only trick I've heard about was to increase the image size by no more than 10% in photoshop. Apparently you can repeat this several times and still maintain a semi-good quality image. It's not perfect, but i've seen people who have managed to take a web image and enlarge it for an OK 8.5" x 11" print out @ 300dpi.
 
ya I'm interested in what Chicoweb says....that if you change the dpi on a web image the size won't change....one thing to consider is whether or not you are 'constraining proportions' when changing the dpi....if so the size will change with it....if not, it will just adjust the number of dot per inch (DPI)
 
To answer your original question, there are some pretty big images on flickr. For example, this image is 1986 x 1972, so you could probably print it at about 6 x 6 inches.

You can search for photos with creative commons licenses, and use those photos in your designs for free (though you may be required to give attribution, or some other requirement).
 
It is very hard (not impossible) to make it look as good as the smaller 72dpi version (even with some program similar to a 'Progressive DVD Player'). The reason being is that you are trying to ADD information that the picture doesn't have. Using various methods (bicubic smoother, nearest neighbor, etc) is the computers way of guessing what might go in between a grey pixel and a grey pixel when res'd up (probably another grey pixel hehe).

Note to EVERYONE doing any type of non-budget project-
Definitely check out http://www.sxc.hu if you are interested in FREE royalty-free stock images. All are high quality and you can usually find something decent (considering its free).
 
When I need to resize an image (Photoshop) I just watch the image size. If I up the res and make the width/height smaller, I make sure the size of the file doesn't go over the original file size. Haven't had any problem converting 72 to 300 if I did that. I just hate when people send me an image they took off the web that is about half an inch tall and expect it to print clearly at 10 times that size.

I agree with mbrellisford about www.sxc.hu Great place when you have no art budget.
 
ac6789 said:
Not to mention if you go to stock photo sites, their images are like 3500 px by 2300 px @ 72 dpi, but change that to 300dpi and you get an excellent print quality image at 8" x 11"


The only trick I've heard about was to increase the image size by no more than 10% in photoshop. Apparently you can repeat this several times and still maintain a semi-good quality image. It's not perfect, but i've seen people who have managed to take a web image and enlarge it for an OK 8.5" x 11" print out @ 300dpi.
Click to expand...

Word! I do this all the time when I send stuff to large format display graphics. I have blown up a 8x11 print to about 7ft! Its a sweet trick, but make sure the source image is good. Mostly straight from digital not from a scan. IMO
 
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