Q & A (November 2008)

Q. I am putting together a brochure and want to include pictures of products from several manufacturers. Why can’t I copy pictures from their web site to use in my brochure – the photos look great on my computer screen.

You are certainly right about photographs looking great on a web page. The phosphors on the computer screen lend a brightness to the color that is visually appealing.

But color created by light shining through red, green and blue phosphors cannot be exactly reproduced with the cyan, magenta and yellow colors of printing ink. Even more importantly, the digital photo files have been optimized for fast loading on the web page by reducing the file size through file compression. And for photographs in JPG format, a lossy compression technique was used.

This means that the original high resolution photograph had pixels permanently removed to make the file smaller. If enough are removed, the remaining pixels will be visible to the naked eye instead of smoothly blending in to one another. In specific circumstances (such as taking a very large photograph and using it in a much smaller size) the pixelation may be less apparent though still visible.

IDEA CORNER (November 2008) - One popular use of a web site is to make a version of a company’s printed documents available there, either printable from a PDF or as online text. The term for this transition from print to web is repurposing. Repurposing can require some planning as well as text editing and some redesign because web readers read in different ways and for different purposes than print readers.

If the printed piece is rich in photographs and graphics, or if it is text-heavy (such as an instruction manual), it may be better to offer it as a print download rather than repurpose the printed piece into online content. In this case, we can provide you with a PDF version of your printed piece. We can deliver the PDF as part of the job on the first printing, or we can retrieve the native application file from our archives and create a PDF of something previously printed. Contact Nathan Fette at (408) 400-0223 for assistance.

Visit http://www.expressprintingusa.com and http://www.colorcopiessanjose.com/ for more information.