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Why
Does My Artwork Print All Fuzzy?
by Tim Campbell, editor —
P
 eople
tell me that they can't understand what's wrong with their printer. Their
images are printing so poorly and they look just fine on-screen.
What's wrong?
There's probably nothing wrong with the printer. The problem is that
there isn't enough image resolution. (This typically happens when someone uses
a piece of artwork from a webpage in a printed document.) What you see on-screen
is not necessarily what you'll see on the printed page.
What's resolution?
The amount of resolution needed (how much information is in the image
file) depends on a couple of different factors. Is the image simply black and
white or a grayscale/color image? What is the final size of the image going to
be?
Black and white
Black and white (1-bit)
bitmap images are actually pretty easy to understand in this regard. You
don't need any more resolution in an image than the resolution of the
final printing device. This means that if the image is being printed on
a 600dpi laser printer, the images only need to have resolution of 600dpi
at 100%.
 Grayscale
and color
Grayscale and color bitmap
images require about 200dpi at 100%. The amount of resolution that
you need is double the linescreen of your printer. A typical linescreen
for a laser printer is 85–100lpi so 200dpi is a pretty safe standard.
How do you know?
If you're scanning an image, you can usually find a resolution setting
(perhaps as an "option") in your scanning software. If you already have
an image, you can find out it's resolution by opening the file in an image-editing
program. Usually you can find the resolution by looking under "image size."
For best results, the image should have the resolution you need at 100% of it's
reproduction size.
But, what about
vector images?
Vector
images, because they are created using PostScript
principles, are resolution independent. Like PostScript fonts, their files
are mathematical in nature and are treated as objects. Overall, I favor
EPS files though they don't print well on printers that aren't PostScript-enabled.
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