Mudshark Loc: Illinois

It won't cost you anything to ask and they would much prefer you ask and send a product that saves them time and money.

bunuweld Loc: Arizona

It is not clear to me how you are asked to send them, email? upload? DVD? If DVD, send your maximum resolution and they can always reduce the image to their convenience. But just reading the submission instructions may clarify the issue for you.

toptrainer Loc: Wellington

Ok, not to be a pain in the butt, but I changed the picture to 300dpi vertical and horizontal, now when I save to my desktop and look at the information i get this: 1370x900,300 dpi 24 bit depth, 1.07 mb 1,126,575 bytes. Document width 4.567x3, they said 3x3. I have to email them today, thank you for all your good input.

Jim Peters Loc: Pittsburgh

Every one Here Is Good People Ad They Really Mean Well But When It Comes To Something Like This The Rules In Business Is Communicate! Don't be Afraid To Contact The Mag And Ask! I've Been Doing It For Over 40 Years. It Saves A lot Of Wheel Spinning! Honest!

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

PPI, not DPI
There is a difference:
http://www.imagescience.com.au/kb/questions/31/The+difference+between+PPI+and+DPI

"Pixels Per Inch a description of the number of pixels from your original image (X pixels by Y pixels, remember) that will be used to tell the printer to print one inch on paper"

"DPI is a measure of how many tiny, tiny droplets of ink a printer is laying down in its dither pattern to form one inch of a print. "

toptrainer Loc: Wellington

OK,if I want to save a picture in Photoshop and send it 300dpi 3x3 what should I do. is there a site I can go to to explain?

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

PPI not DPI.


This is one way to do it:
Set up the crop tool as shown and use it on your image.
Notice there is no option to use DPI.
Your photo will be 900 x 900 pixels.
3 x 3 inches @ 300 Pixels Per Inch = 900 x 900 pixels.

toptrainer Loc: Wellington

wow, way too simple, thank you. I am learning all this.

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

I still am!
Good luck.

toptrainer Loc: Wellington

so when I save it I don't have to Change anything, just save and send?

SmittyOne Loc: California

While not a commercial photog, with the work I did for manual prep, we would flatten the image, kick up brightness by about 30%, contrast up by 15%, and save as jpg, with no compression. Since you did not say what resolution your camera has, I would suspect that you do not need to change the resolution. The magazine editors will do that, if necessary.

Note. dpi is lot the same as pixel count. Dot per inch refers to printers, while ppi refers to the pixels on your display, or in your graphic.

Pixels Per Inch (PPI)

Suppose you have a 100 x 100 pixel image, it could be printed at many different sizes. If you set the image to print at 10 PPI, then you’d have a 10″ x 10″ image. If you set the image to print at 100 PPI, you’d have a 1″ x 1″ image. Note that adjusting this value doesn’t effect the number of pixels in the image at all, it just changes how big the print will be.

Take our 100 x 100 pixel image again. Suppose it’s set at 100 PPI (producing the same 1″ x 1″ printed image). With re-sampling off, when you adjust the PPI the dimensions adjust as well, this is how things worked in the example above. With re-sampling on, the dimensions won’t change. So, if you changed the PPI to 10 with re-sampling on, you would still keep a 1″ x 1″ image and the computer would throw out pixels to make the image stay that size. So in this case, you’d end up with a 10 x 10 pixel image in the end. If you went the other way, and changed the PPI to 300, then the computer would generate pixels to make a 300 x 300 pixel image that’s still 1″ x 1″ when printed.

Usually, the only reason you want to use re-sampling is for reducing the size of your image. For example, my scanner produces 3888 x 2592 images. These images are too big to use online (both for display and because of file size). By using re-sampling, I can adjust the size of the images to something more appropriate for online use.


DPI

Now let’s talk about DPI. DPI only refers to the printer. Every pixel output is made up of different colored inks (usually 4-6 colors, although many printers use more now). Because of the small number of colors, the printer needs to be able to mix these inks to make up all the colors of the image. So each pixel of the image is created by a series of tiny dots (you could think of them as sub-pixels). Generally, the higher the DPI, the better the tonality of the image, colors should look better and blends between colors should be smoother. You’ll also use more ink and the print job will be slower. You might want to try setting your printer to a lower DPI to save ink and speed up the job, see if you notice any difference in quality. The lowest setting where you don’t see any loss in quality should be the best one to use.

So a 1200 dpi printer uses 1200 dots of ink in every inch to make up the colors. If you were printing a 300 PPI image, then every pixel would be made up of 16 smaller ink dots (1200 DPI x 1200 DPI / 300 PPI x 300 PPI). A lower DPI would have fewer ink dots making up each pixel, which would make the color look worse. A higher DPI would have more ink dots for each pixel and should give more accurate color (especially under close examination).

toptrainer Loc: Wellington

OK, I sent in the pictures and all worked out great. I can post the article with the pictures if anyone is interested.

marcomarks Loc: Ft. Myers, FL

I would send 300ppi TIFF files sized to 8X12 (standard 2:3 ratio) and let them do what they want with them. As a magazine they certainly have the ability to convert down to a JPG if they desire.