Reply To: InDesign/Prepress Myths

I see on Mark's link above that raster images should only be TIFFs. In the last couple of years I've got into the habit of, if I need to edit an image in Photoshop, saving it as a PSD file and using that in my InDesign document. Is there any reason I shouldn't do this, or is this another myth?

Maybe I'm fighting a losing battle here, but I was taught (by the old-school printer gaffer who took the production classes where I studied) that 'line' and 'halftone' were print-specific terms, 'line' referring to artwork that used only solid ink and 'halftone' to shaded or coloured work that required halftone screening. But most people I work with treat them as equivalents to 'diagram' (or 'image best suited to vector format'*) and 'photograph' (or 'image best suited to raster format') respectively. It's possible to have diagrams with different shades of grey/colour, which would need halftoning even if it's done as vector art. So I tend to avoid the terms 'line' and 'halftone' altogether, unless I'm specifically talking about screening – 'diagram' and 'photograph' is a more useful distinction and much more comprehensible to authors!

*Not necessarily an image in vector format though: we get graphs given to us as 300dpi JPEGs quite frequently!