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[Naked Snake]

I'm designing a promotional brochure that will be printed at a professional printshop (press), I'm using Adobe InDesign, this is my first job as a "freelance graphic designer" and I'm kinda learning the ropes as I go

Anyway, what DPI setting do you recommend I use for my graphics? Does it matter at all? I just finished designing the cover page which is one big image and I wasn't paying attention but it turned out to be 200 dpi... Is that good enough? Can I increase the dpi if needed without having to redo the whole thing from scratch? I can never for the life of me understand the importance of dpi in digital images, anything above 72 dpi seems to look the same to me.

 

[borghe]

when working with press you generally want around 300-500 dpi. basically you balance between the dpi and resolution. doing something that will end up being 27x18 at 500 dpi really sucks.

200 dpi in general though is pretty low for any professional printing. general rule of thumb is you really want to start at 300-350.

 

[Naked Snake]

Crap!

I tried increasing the dpi on the image but it's getting "wider", is there a way to increase it without affecting the aspect ratio? Please don't tell me I have to do it from scratch again

 

[borghe]

yeah.. umm.. I believe you uncheck "resample image" or something like that. it will keep the same rez but increase DPI.

be wary though. it is increasing the size of the image with dpi because, well, if you want an 8x10 print and want it to be 350dpi, it will need to be 2800x3500 instead of 1600x2000 for 200dpi.

by changing the DPI without changing the actual resolution the picture will essentially look the same (i.e. 200dpi) when printed at your desired size.

if that makes sense.

 

[axxxj]

It's generally not a good idea to increase the DPI once it's done as this means photoshop will be trying to add data that isn't their and it can make it look rather dodgy. It looks like you might have to redo it, but don't hold hold my word as gospel as their may be other ways to sort it out that I don't know about.

 

[borghe]

doh.. was thinking of photoshop, not indesign... well, in photoshop you go to Image Size... and uncheck resample image and then set the DPI to what you want it to. you can then see the image size change accordingly. have to imagine there is something similar in InDesign.

edit - and axxxj is sort of right.. Photoshop doesn't do anything to it until you go to print it, and then yeah, it interpolates it (which is what I was saying) in the same manner it would if you just printed the 200dpi pic at a larger size.

I guess I will have to side with axxxj on this and tell you you have to start over. at 200dpi everything you have done will just be too small to work with any further at a higher dpi.

 

[Naked Snake]

Ok thanks guys, I guess I'll have to redo it.