Supplying Artwork

Should you prefer to scan your own artwork or provide an existing photo in your collection please read the following carefully.

SIZE

Be sure to scan at 300 DPI. Most consumer scanners default to 72 DPI (Internet or Web Quality). This resolution is fine for Inkjet printing or email, but will give you very poor results when printed on an offset press.

RESIZING ALREADY SCANNED IMAGES

This will not keep the quality of your photo. Re-scanning the photo is the only real alternative.

SAVING SCANNED IMAGES

Each scanned image should be saved as a TIFF or EPS file. JPEG is acceptable if necessary.

CHANGING FILE FORMATS

JPEG files are optimized for the web. In order to shrink the file size, JPEGs reduce the colour range and uses larger blocks of pixels to fill up space in the picture. This drastically reduces the document size. Once that colour is removed it can’t be put back by re-saving it as a TIFF. TIFFs are much bigger than JPEGs, but will look better when printed in the magazine. JPEGs come out flat looking because it’s missing most of the colour range needed for offset printing. There is nothing more disappointing than a beautiful photo ruined by JPEG compression.

FILE SIZE AND EMAIL

Large files can be sent on a disk via the mail to:

TNC™ Publishing Group
#1, 6923 Farrell Road S.E.
Calgary, Alberta,
Canada T2H 0T3

Please make note of the name of the magazine it is for.

SCANNING DIFFICULTIES

Our art department can scan your original photos/slides/negatives if you are not sure what to do. Just send in the original and we will return it to you once the magazine is printed, or sooner if requested.

PRINTING ARTWORK TO SUBMIT

When a photo is printed on a colour printer, the image is made up of lines or dots that you probably can’t see with your eyes. When we scan it in though the image is very grainy and looks horrible. If the file was printed out, it must be from someone’s computer, so it can be emailed or sent on a disk instead. This also applies to previously-printed magazine or Yellow Pages ads.

DIGITAL CAMERA PHOTOS

Digital photos will work okay as long as when you take them, you set your camera to the highest resolution setting you can. This will ensure that we have a good sized photo to work with, otherwise we end up with photos that are less than 1″ big, not big enough for any ad.