Preparing images for publication in a book #1

I'm deep in the depths of correspondence with c. 50 artists at the moment in relation to inviting people to contribute images to my book. The next step is to help them generating both the images and the copyright forms and getting both transferred over to me so I can send them to the publisher.

It seems like a good time to record some thoughts on image preparation should you ever get asked whether you'd like your artwork in a publication.

So here's the first instalment. More later....

Generating top quality images for publication

#1 top tip is "assume all art you produce will be needed for a publication"

That's drawings, paintings, sketches etc

That way when you generate it first time round you'll scan it at 300 dpi or take a decent photograph and consequently have a file you can go to when somebody asks if it's possible to use that pic you produced two years ago.

Plus it also means if it's one you're sending to an exhibition and it sells that you still have a decent image of it!

So always, always, always get a decent digital image of everything you produce.

Then do the low res for the web image which is the one you will share with the world! :)

#2 tip make sure you learn how to produce a decent image for reproduction

Basically we're talking about a large image @300dpi or more, preferably saved as a TIF or other format which includes all the pixels. Plus saved in CMYK format would seem like a good idea since these images are being preserved for print publication rather than website.

Here's a couple of links to information and advice about producing top quality images

• All About Images - available as a pdf in Preparing Images for PowerPoint, the Web, and Publication

This comprehensive guide focuses on many common image questions in regards to image resolutions, resizing images, file types, vector and raster images, scanning, saving and more.Last Updated: Nov 15, 2013 URL: http://guides.lib.umich.edu/allaboutimages Print Guide

• Preparing Images for Print and Online Publication Tutorial by bcotier

#3 tip is file and archive your super duper file somewhere where you can find it!

Get a system and follow it!

You might file by year of production or type of image and have subsets. Whatever !  Just make sure that you leave yourself enough clues that you can find it again later.

This is where tagging suddenly seems to look like a very good idea.

I can tell you that a large file totally devoted to and well organised with TIF files suddenly looks like the intelligent answer!

#4 tip is file it somewhere else as well!

Don't forget there are various services now which give you oodles of space for very little outlay which means you need never ever rely on one copy which is on a hard drive which is going to fail at some point in the future.

If you don't backup, be prepared to forgo the retrospective catalogue - and all requests to get your artwork published ......... ;)

More to come.

How do you send large images of your artwork?

This post examines how people make large images available to me and how you make large images available to others.

As I review art competitions, open exhibitions and major exhibitions in national galleries I get access to a lot of very large high quality, high resolution images of artwork.  However these high resolution  images are only rarely sent to me via email.

Picselect website

Here's a summary of the ways that galleries make images available to me.

• some galleries host their images on their own website in secure space.  I had to provide credentials and be approved before I could enter this space.
• some galleries use a secure hosting website which is not the same as their own website.  The Press Association's PicSelect is one such site

This is the Press Association's premier publicity distribution service, supplying thousands of print-quality images, video and audio files into the hands of influential journalists and editors at the heart of the media industry.

YouSendIt website

• some galleries use software and cloudbased computing to give you access to files which are too large to email - using software such as YouSendIt
• I hardly ever get sent a CD with images.

With the exception of the latter, what they all have in common is that all I get is a link to the image.  

This can be either a hyperlink in a press release or on a website or in an email.

Interestingly, the only people who send me large images tend to be artists or small galleries who are not tech savvy.

Maybe it's time that artists and smaller galleries got rather more sophisticated about how they make high quality images available to potential buyers and reviewers?

Or maybe they have already?

How do you send your large high quality images?

Tell me what types of services and methods you currently use to send large very large high quality images to potential purchasers, clients or galleries.  

This might be in the context of:

• digital entry to art competitions or open exhibitions, 
• submissions to galleries, 
• illustration work for clients or 
• information for prospective purchasers.

Please answer the following queries and/or leave a comment below and I'll use the information to help share information with a wider circle of artists about current and best practices for sending images.

• Do you send images compressed or uncompressed? (eg jpeg or Tif?)
• Do you zip files?
• Do you voluntarily limit the file size? (if so what sort of limit do you use?)
• If no prescribed method is stipulated, do you use specific software or cloud services to transmit images?
• Please indicate whether you are an artist or a gallery when responding.

Image file formats for artist bloggers

This post is about which image file formats artists and bloggers should use for what - and why.

This post is about image file formats for artists and bloggers. I'm writing it to remind myself of the basic characteristics of different formats because I'm in the middle of getting to grips with a new graphics program. This means I'm revisiting a lot of the basics as well as learning new stuff. It's reminding me of how much there is to learn when you start to use images on the internet.

A picture of a flower compressed with successively higher loss JPEG compression ratios from left to right (source - wikipedia)

I'll start with my basic aide memoire - it goes from the simplest to the more complex.

Which file formats should I use for what - and why?

Very basic simple images for the internet

What you want: something very simple in colour terms and quite possibly very small eg an avatar

• use a GIF file (Graphics Interchange Format) which is limited to an 8-bit palette, or 256 colors making it very suitable for very simple graphics files
• It can render the image exactly and keep the file size small so long as the colour is one of the 256 colours.

Images for the internet (website / blog / gallery site)

What you want: images which look good on screen and load quickly. They don't need to be big or to be capable of being printed.

• always use a compression format (eg jpeg or gif) if you want an image to load quickly
• a typical jpeg file is still too big for the internet so needs to be made web-ready
• create a web-ready jpeg through compression to (say) no more than a 100KB file - this means that they look good on the internet; are useless when printed out (ie protects copyright concerns) and they load quickly and do not deter people from visiting your website or blog
• reduce the size of the image (ie reduce the pixel dimensions) to create a web-ready file. I typically make the longest side no more than 500 pixels and very rarely use anything over 1,000 pixels on the internet
• reduce the number of dots per inch (dpi) to make a smaller file. This is different from reducing the dimensions. 72 dots per inch (dpi) is a good standard for web-ready jpeg files. (It's the one I always use) A lower dpi can lead to more pixelated images. A bigger dpi can create large files which take longer to load

Images for entering art competitions

what you want: images which look excellent and comply in every way with the technical requirements of formats for entry

• always comply with whatever the requirements are for type of file format and maximum size in terms of pixels and kilobytes
• create a file which is the maximum allowed as this creates the best chance of creating an impressive image
• if you can submit via a disc or via an upload to a formal submission website use an uncompressed file format (eg TIFF) if possible. This will create very large files of as good a quality as possible (but it won't make a bad photo look good - quite the reverse!)
• if you have to submit online using email consider using jpeg - but appreciate that the quality of file may be less good than those submitted by others

Other tips:

• find out how jurors will review the images. If they are reviewing via a slideshow or on a monitor screen then they certainly don't need to be 300 dpi (the standard for good quality prints)
• always make sure you know how to create a new format/upload to a submission before you run out of time!

Images for fine art colour printing (eg giclee printing)

what you want: the very best quality image with the potential to print to the largest size possible

• File format assumes you want the very best result possible - which means no compression or loss of pixels
• unless you have an A3 scanner of good quality, large work needs to be photographed to a professional standard and you need to save the digital photos in the correct image file format
• Use an uncompressed file format (eg TIFF - which can be created from jpeg files). This will: enable you to produce files with high quality images and create exceptionally large files
• enable you to achieve the maximum possible size of image for the given image

TIP: if you ever want to check out what the file format of your image actually looks like then use the 'view actual size' option in the 'view' option. This shows you thse size and quality of the image you've created.

If any of you have any useful tips about which file format to use for different artistic purposes please leave a comment below.

Tomorrow [Update - sorry! On Friday] I'll cover the basic file formats and their characteristics.

Correcting colour: another way to stop your white paper looking grey

In my last post about correcting colour - Correcting colour: How to stop your white paper looking grey - I looked at how you can use the levels profile for the individual colours of the RGB profile to bring a very distorted colour back to its proper colour. In other words - how to stop your white paper looking grey - or, as in my example, a very vivid periwinkle blue!

These are the Adobe Photoshop & help pages which provide an overview of Levels adjustments.

You can also use the eyedropper tool in Levels to identify parts of an image which should be a true black, white or grey.

Personally I find it rather too crude - a bit like the simple quick fix adjustments which are possible in Elements.

Here's what happens when we take my photo of my pen and ink sketch in a Moleskine which was photographed in deep shade in a garden. I then applied the white eyedropper to the background paper of the image.

(left) original image (right) after the white eyedropper tool in Levels was used to click on 'blue' paper

As you can see, the pen and ink drawing has virtually disappeared whereas it came up clearly using the more longwinded adjustments from the previous post. To my mind it looks sunblasted - it's a "whiteout"!

I then magnified the image and used the black eyedropper to drop onto one of the ink lines - and this is what I got. It's a heavily pixelated version of my drawing - which isn't very evident on the blog but is IRL

Like I said - I prefer adjusting the profiles. I think I get a much more accurate colour balance that way.

However next time you produce an image of a drawing on white paper which looks grey why not try the eyedropper tool - you may have a different experience.

Correcting colour: How to stop your white paper looking grey

I very often see people posting images of work on white paper where some of the white paper is showing - but it looks grey. Very often the colours in the image are also very muted. "It looks much better in real life" is the comment that often goes alongside. I know I've written this - have you?

If you have and you want to know what to do to make your image appear more accurate in terms of colour read on!

Correcting Colour - Learn to Love Levels!

I used to have the same problem until I discovered the Levels function in Photoshop Elements - and how tweaking the RGB colour profile levels of your image can really help you achieve a much more accurate result.

Typically people need to adjust from images which look grey to white.

In this demonstration I'm going to show you how I adjusted a photo of a pen and ink sketch - taken in shade with the Moleskine Sketchbook on the ground of the garden - from blue to light cream. It's a very effective way of showing you how much you can change an image to render it more accurately.

Colour is RGB

You may remember how colour is created and colour is rendered in digital files and on screen.

However if you need a refresher take a look at Colour science, systems and models - Resources for Artists. The aim of this site is to help artists understand more about the science of colour, how it works and how people think (or thought). It was developed as a result of my project about Colour in June/July 2008. The related information site Colour - Resources for Artists which provides links to information and advice about colour and how to understand and analyse it as an artist.

Correcting Colour - how to use RGB levels to move from blue to light cream

This is a demonstration of how you can take a 'blue' image and convert it back to the colour of the paper. I first wrote about this - and tips for correcting colour - in International Sketchcrawl - Great Comp Garden, Kent on my sketchbook blog back in August 2007.

The baseline This is what the photo I took in shade in the garden looked like. I wanted a photograph of the pen and ink sketch before I started adding coloured pencils. I placed my Moleskine sketchbook on the ground in the shade where I was sat and took a photo from above. Although the colour of the Moleskine sketchbook paper is slightly creamy paper it comes out looking blue!

The Colour Profile is in the grey box The grey box on the right hand side shows you what this colour looks like as a colour profile in Levels. You'll notice three peaks in the profile. That's because the red, green and blue (RGB) elements all responded differently and all have their own unique profiles.

Review the red profile: Starting the adjustment using Levels - I first of all selected the red profile from the drop down menu. Below you can see how the image of the sketchbook is unchanged but you can now see the colour profile associated with the colour red - which is very much oriented around the left hand half of the chart.

Adjusting the colour red profile: What I did next was I pulled the little white triangle at the right hand bottom edge of the chart over to the right hand edge of the profile for the colour red. The colour change in the image below is what it looked like with this new profile. If you look closely at the grey colour chart box, you'll see that the white triangle beneath the bottom axis of profile chart has moved from the right hand edge to left of centre of the axis.

Adjusting the colour green and blue profiles: I then repeated this step for the green and blue profiles - see below for the 'after adjustment' image and the change to both colour and colour profile. Note how the colour profiles for blue and green are different.

Green 'after' image above

Blue 'after' image above

I then decided that the image still had a slight blue cast to it, so I used the remove colour cast function (Enhance/Adjust colour/remove colour cast. I clicked on the part of the image which looked the most blue - and got the image you can see below. The paper in the Moleskine sketchbook is back to looking slightly cream - and you can see the pen and ink drawing done in Great Comp Garden prior to the addition of coloured pencils.

The final version - after adjustments for levels and colour cast

Just to round this off, this is what the sketch looked like after the addition of coloured pencil - as done on a very hot and sunny afternoon in Kent.

Great Comp Garden
pen and sepia ink and coloured pencil in Moleskine sketchbook
copyright Katherine Tyrrell

And there's more......

There are other ways of also making adjustments. I'll highlight another one next Saturday.