Our printing process provides high quality business cards. To get the highest quality cards, you need to make certain the artwork you provide is of a high quality. This can be difficult for the majority of you who do not have special graphics programs that can evaluate the art. So in the absence of graphics software, here are some rules of thumb.

Photos:
Photos from most digital cameras will be high quality. Photos obtained from the web (other than ones from image services, like the ones mentioned here) can vary greatly in quality, and it may be difficult to judge whether or not they will be usable. The size of the image on your computer screen can give you a clue as to it's acceptability, but given that screen sizes and resolution can vary from one computer to the next, the size of the image on your screen may not be the absolute indicator. If you have a doubt about the resolution of an image that you obtained from the internet, you can find out exactly how big it is by doing the following:

1. On a PC system, right click on the file and choose "Properties." On a Mac, Right click on the file and choose "Get Info."
   
2. On a PC system, choose the "Summary" Tab, and click on advanced. On a mac, look under the "More info" space.

On both types of systems, you should now be able to see both the horizontal and vertical dimensions of the image. With a little math, you will be able to see how this would relate to the real world. Take, for example, an image that would need to fit on the background of a business card. As per our specifications, a business card is 3.625" X 2.125." Say we were to download an image that is 1088 Pixels horizonally and 638 Pixels verticaly. All files that we print need to be at 300dpi (wich roughly translates to 300 pixels per inch.) If we divide the horizontal pixels by 300 (1088 pixels wide divided by 300 pixels per inch) we find that the image is approximatly 3.625 inches wide when printed at that resolution. If we apply the same math to the vertical pixel dimenson, we find that the image will be 2.125 inches tall; perfect for our application. If it turns out that the image is too large, it isn't a problem as an image can always be reduced. If you find, however, that the image is smaller than what is needed, the image might not be usable. Images that are taken from the web usually can only be enlarged by 10% or so without losing too much visual quality. This may be even less if the image has been compressed a great deal. As a rule of thumb, bigger is better.

Scanned images:
Scanning an image is like looking at it under a magnifying glass. What looks sharp to the naked eye may in fact have jagged edges and uneven color when it is scanned. The jagged/uneven attributes are the number one reason we have to "redraw" logos that are scanned from a business card.

When scanning you can usually get good results when the piece being scanned is larger than it will be on the card. It is also very helpful if the original document is on a high quality paper.

Logos:
If your customer has paid to have a logo created in the past, they should be able to request the original artwork file. It is a good idea to send this to nick@powergraphics.biz and ask him to verify it's quality before creating the job.

A Note on Copyrights and Trademarks:
Some of the files that you come across as you search for images may be the intellectual property of other persons or organizations. As such, they may be subject to different Copyright and Trademark laws. While you may never run into a problem using these images, we stronlgly advise against using such materials. The images that are found in our Artwork Sources are royalty free, and can be used without any problems.

 

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