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• • May 21, 2018 at 6:36 am #103878
    Jamie123

    Member

    I have always personally believed that rasterized text (particularly body copy) is unacceptable for printing, even if it’s 300dpi. It’s something I just would never do, and on many occasions I’ve rejected artwork sent to me because it had rasterized text. Other times I’ve just recreated the text myself so that it’s all vector.

    This isn’t something I was ever “taught”, and I’m no print expert, but it just seemed like common sense to me that vector graphics will look better if they are plotted onto the plate as solid, continuous shapes, rather than a series of pixellated squares approximated with halftones.

    The idea of losing the vector information just gives me the creeps.

    But now I’m questioning that view, in light of a recent case: I was sent business card artwork from a large company. The artwork was completely rasterized at 300dpi. At first I assumed it was an amateur job, because it was supplied as a medium quality RGB JPEG! However, when I spoke to the company, they assured me that they use that kind of artwork for all their business cards and their design department insists it’s perfectly suitable for print.

    So now I’m questioning this whole issue.

    I’ve just checked with Google and the first result I found says that text SHOULD always be rasterized in Photoshop:
    https://www.serviceprinters.com/help/design/common-mistakes.html

    Surely that can’t be right?

    I have such tremendous respect for the fellows here at InDesign secrets, so would like to put this to you! Whatever you say is right, I’ll go with that! :)

  • May 21, 2018 at 6:51 am #103879
    Graham Park

    Member

    Rasterise text at 300dpi will not give you the best result.
    For offset printing a platesetter runs at about 2400dpi (depends on maker).
    Most digital press run at 600dpi or higher these days.
    So you can run a lower dpi but when compared to a file with vector text you will see the difference.

    You could just follow Adobe’s suggestion of rasterising bitmap art/text at 1200dpi that would work. But the file gets really big. Maybe someone should design a vector output method I don’t know like Postscript or PDF.

    If someone say they print business cards from 300dpi files find a new printer.

  • May 21, 2018 at 11:39 am #103883
    Colleen Shannon

    Member

    Jamie123, as much as we love vector, it ends up as a raster image on paper. I don’t rasterize vector unless it’s needed and to be safe, I do it at 600 ppi.

    It sounds like the people you’ve talked to are trying to avoid font issues. (designers are notorious for sending over jobs without fonts.)

    Ultimately with printing, ask your printer what the ppi of images should be @ 100%.

    There’s more about resolution and offset/digital printing to understand, such as PPI vs DPI vs LPI (line screen).

    Sorry, Graham, I disagree with you about 300 dpi – for regular, everyday printing, that is standard. Newspapers and magazines are regularly printed at 225 dpi.

  • May 21, 2018 at 11:45 am #103884
    Tim Murray

    Member

    The company doing 300 dpi and JPEG logos has no business creating artwork. The text should either be in a typeface the printer has or should be embedded (if possible) in, say, a PDF. Logos — unless it’s a photograph — should usually be EPS, SVG, AI, or some vector format. If the customer’s art dept says “it’s perfectly suitable for print” then they settle for less than excellent.

  • May 21, 2018 at 12:39 pm #103885
    Colleen Shannon

    Member

    “The company doing 300 dpi and JPEG logos has no business creating artwork.”

    “If someone say they print business cards from 300dpi files find a new printer.”

    These statements have no basis in reality. We don’t deal in how things should be; we deal with how they are.

  • May 21, 2018 at 3:47 pm #103907
    Graham Park

    Member

    This shows how the industry has gone down hill in quality.
    Photograph can be printed at a lower resolution and look acceptable but text no.
    Your eye is very attuned to to text and line and you will easily pick when the text is not as sharp as it could be.
    Now a straight line at 0º, 90º etc will print fine, turn it to 30º or worse still 15º and you will see the staircase that is created.
    So you can print a business card from a 300dpi or even a 150dpi file it is just that it will not be as clean and sharp as it should be.
    PDF with embedded fonts are what the industry works on and ensures that text and vector graphics print at the resolution of the output device.
    If you and your clients accept less than optimal quality then fine. You can also print business cards from an RGB JPEG file and then watch the customers complain that the colours are not right, (gamut anyone!) So what can be done and how it should be done are two different things.

    I come from the packaging industry so we are interested in the best quality possible, We run 20 & 15 micron second order stochastic screen with 6-colour process so there is quality.

  • May 22, 2018 at 4:48 am #103910
    Jamie123

    Member

    Thanks to everyone for your answers. There seems to be some disagreement, but generally I found Graham’s answer the most helpful and am going with that.

    So, basically, text doesn’t HAVE to be vector, but 300dpi is just way too low.

    And it is crazy supplying a business card as a JPEG instead of a PDF or postscript.

  • May 22, 2018 at 6:04 am #103911
    Tim Murray

    Member

    @Jamie123: Just to clarify, you could have a JPEG described within a PDF file format or described by the PostScript language, and a vector image is still rasterized as it hits the press and something described as 2400 dpi in a file can end up a 300 at the printer. I can’t think of a resource to help better disentangle all this stuff but maybe someone can chime in.

  • June 19, 2018 at 1:11 pm #103912
    Graham Park

    Member

    Printing 101
    Most laser printers these days are 600dpi, inkjet printer 600-1200dpi, platesetter about 2400dpi.

    Adobe recommends
    https://blogs.adobe.com/contentcorner/2017/04/19/optimal-settings-to-create-print-ready-pdfs/

    Typically, to get a PDF document with higher quality, the printer driver downsamples color and grayscale images above 300 DPI, and monochrome images above 1200 DPI.

    Remember text would be considered a monochrome image so for best quality 1200dpi even if it is colour this the res you need for best reproduction,
    This is what Postscript/PDF was developed for, you can do a page layout in Photoshop at 1200dpi and it will print great, but is it in anyway practical?? No, the file get too large. Hence postscript, perfect text and vector graphics and a very small file size.

  • June 24, 2018 at 6:20 pm #104499
    Jacqueline Peeler

    Member

    Where do TypeKit fonts fall in into this discussion, if at all? They are not embedded but my understanding is today almost all commercial printers have a TypeKit subscription so they would have all fonts from TypeKit and you’re safe using it. It makes me nervous though, I do a lot of work through a freelance site and clients don’t always share their printer’s contact information or even know who will print it at the time they contract for the design work.

  • June 24, 2018 at 6:43 pm #104500
    Graham Park

    Member

    Jackie, TypeKit fonts will be embed in PDF’s and is you client uses the current version of InDesign it is by subscription and TypeKit will be included in this.

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