Using Screenshots in magazines?? dpi??

[I***@adobeforums.com]

Hi there,

can anybody help?

I need to produce some screenshots for placing into a magazine, the magazine is designed in Indesign CS2. I have got SNAGIT which i generally use but the problem i forsee is that by nature screens are 72dpi so SNAGIT (capture utility) will capture at 72dpi which isn't suffiencient for a professional print job - normally my print house tells me to do 300dpi.

So i was wondering how all the other magazines get around this?? Surley they can't change the dpi to 300dpi as the picture would become pixelized and wouldn't look at all good.

Any help or insight into this would be of great help

Thanks in advance

Ian

[Mike Witherell]

Screenshots of what, exactly? Software dialog boxes? Or pix of people?

[I***@adobeforums.com]

well dialog boxes, pictures of windows and control panel...

But it would be great to do pix of people too, but i thought this is impossible to take 72dpi to 300dpi?

Thanks

Ian

[S***@adobeforums.com]

If you want to resample your screen shots (no need, but suit yourself) then choose "Nearest Neighbour" as your method. This will preserve the pixel shape as a square, making the screen shot look more authentic.

Also, make sure you resample is 100% increments. Don't go from 72 to 300, go from 72 to 288.

[I***@adobeforums.com]

why is there no need for professional print work?

I remember once putting in a picture that looked really nice on my monitor into a magazine and left it at 72dpi and who my god it was seriously bad...

I thought this was the reason behind it, that all pcitures had to have around 300 dpi for professional print work?

ian

[I***@adobeforums.com]

ok i will give it a go, thanks.. why only to 288? is there a reason?

I have tried this before, and it always becomes pixelated, but i am going to give it another shot now..

[S***@adobeforums.com]

ok i will give it a go, thanks.. why only to 288? is there a reason?





I remember once putting in a picture that looked really nice on my monitor
into a magazine and left it at 72dpi and who my god it was seriously bad...





I thought this was the reason behind it, that all pcitures had to have
around 300 dpi for professional print work?




You want your image to look pixelated, so low resolution is not only acceptable, it is recommended. To keep the pixels looking perfectly square, anlarge the image in increments of 100%. Using 400% as a rule, each pixel will scale to 4x4 pixels. 72 ppi X 400% = 288 ppi.

If you resample to 300 pixels per inch, that will be 416.7%. Each pixel will be either 4x4, 4x5 5x4 or 5x5 pixels. With a 25% variation in size for items (the screen pixels) that should be the same size, you'll get a very ugly and noticibly distorted image, but you might not know why.

[I***@adobeforums.com]

Hi scott,

No, i don't want for it to look pixelated. i..e Screen capture a dialog box in windows.. and then use it in a magazine..

hence it needs to look good and unpixelated ...

Magazines do it but don't know how..

Ian

[K***@adobeforums.com]

Post by I***@adobeforums.com
No, i don't want for it to look pixelated.

Yes, you actually do.

You want it to look like a screen capture, not a photograph. Your monitor is
showing you dialog boxes at 72 dpi, and you want your screen caps to look
the same in the magazine as they do in front of you on your monitor: 72 dpi.
If you could "un-pixelate" them, they would no longer look like screen caps.

Resampling these up to 288 dpi will make them look exactly the same (if you
do it right) but will serve no useful purpose. Resampling them to 300 dpi
will actually make them look worse.

Ken Benson

[D***@adobeforums.com]

I did a lot of study of this a few years back and concluded that resampling upwards to 200% using nearest neighbor was all that was necessary. Going further might stop preflight programs from complaining but past 200% all you got were larger files.

Now this was in the days when screen shots were much chunkier than they are these days. There's something to be said for treating screen shots more like photographs these days, what with all the anti-aliasing and graduations. Which says: don't upsample at all, all it will do is make the image look fuzzy.

Dave

[Dov Isaacs]

Our recommendation from Adobe is to absolutely not do any pre-RIP image resampling in Photoshop or otherwise. The RIP itself is quite capable of handling this process and typically does just as good a job as you will do with Photoshop. Upsampling in Photoshop does not add any detail where there wasn't any for screen shots or anything else. PLUS you can actually downgrade quality by prematurely upsampling such images. How? At RIP time, no matter what the resolution of your image is, resampling is automatically done during the screening process (it is inherent in that process). If you have upsampled previously, certain detail may be lost by downsampling at the RIP, possibly showing distortions and/or losing detail.

Bottom line, for images such as computer screen shots, just use as is. Hopefully future versions of Windows and MacOS will provide screen captures that go against the original text and vector items that underlie the screen display and output those to the "screen capture" files as a combination of text, vector, and raster!

- Dov

[G***@adobeforums.com]

Post by Dov Isaacs
Hopefully future versions of Windows and MacOS will provide screen
captures that go against the original text and vector items that
underlie the screen display and output those to the "screen
capture" files as a combination of text, vector, and raster!

That would be cool, especially with future OSes moving towards vector
representations of UI elements.

[I***@adobeforums.com]

wow! this has been a real eye opener for me.. Ok agreed, just put my screen shots at 72dpi ready for print.

although i am still a little confused about it:

So putting the screenshot in the magazine at 72dpi will look exactly the same as on my screen i.e. nice and crisp and clean!?

i.e. take an example of PC MAGAZINE (a popular magazine for PC's) they have a review for the latest Windows Vista with all the screen shots, they look wonderful- these are in at 72dpi then?

So if thats the case, then when i scan an image if i scan it at 72dpi and look at it on my screen then it looks wonderful, not blocky or anything .. just the way i like it.

So why if i put my scan into a magazine it turns out blocky??

Also if somebody generally gives me a logo for a business card that i am doing i always tell them i need 300dpi otherwise it becomes blocky on the business card/magazine but on the screen it looks really nice.

I remember doing a catalog once for a holiday company and we were forced to use some pictures from the internet so we downloaded them and chose to up the size to 300dpi and put them in the catalog and some of them just looked real bad.

Thanks everyone for your continued support, i am just trying to undone years of learning something that appears i might have got it wrong :-)

Thanks

Ian

[Dov Isaacs]

The point is not that 72dpi is good for everything or anything, but rather, that if all you have is 72dpi from a screen shot, pumping it up in Photoshop early in the workflow will not help you in any way and in fact can cause damage. Simply leave as is. Unless you blow up the screen shot size to something large in print, you should be fine. I have been doing this for years without any problems.

Obviously, if you have content you are scanning, scan it at a resolution commensurate with the needs for printing, typically at least 300dpi for color or grayscale or 1200dpi for monochrome (just black and white, no gray) at 100% magnification.

- Dov

[I***@adobeforums.com]

If its the case that "looks good on screen will look good in magazine" then why do i need to both scanning anything above 72dpi? and why can't i download pics from the net change them over to CMYK and just use them as they are?

Thanks again

Ian

[I***@adobeforums.com]

p.s I am talking about OFFSET printing, i suppose this doesn't make a difference..

[I***@adobeforums.com]

Thanks Dov,

so just a quick question then.. If i have an image of a person or a logo that i got from the not that i place on my page at 4cm x 4cm (actual size)

and then i got the chance of scanning the source i..e the picture of the person or logo at 300dpi and also place on my page at 4cm x 4cm.

Both picutres are the same.. Exactly! apart from resolution.

If i go to print, then what differences would i see between the 2 pictures?

Would it be a major difference..

Remmbering that the 72dpi pic on my computer monitor looks perfect ... very nice.

and of course the one i just scanned at 300dpi looks just as good..

Thanks once again

Ian

[I***@adobeforums.com]

got from the not is supposed to read i got from the net oopps

[C***@adobeforums.com]

My understanding is this (feel free to correct me if I've got it wrong!)

You have got a screen capture which is a certain number of pixels in size (800x600, 1024x768 etc)

Taking 1024x768 as an example, at 72dpi that capture will reproduce at just over 14" wide. I doubt that you really want it as large as that on your page, so you will scale it down to a more suitable size.
As you scale the image in InDesign the effective resolution increases, so if you scale the image down to 25%, you will have a 288dpi image (which is close enough to 300dpi to give you good results) which is about 3½" wide.

Colin W

[I***@adobeforums.com]

hi cjc williams,

ermm, ok thats fine but what if i don't want to make it smaller to increase the dpi.

Ok let me give an example. Found this file via the net. Its just a random file for the example

<Loading Image...>

It measures in 257 x 165 pixels and actually its at 71 dpi but its close enough for the example i think :-)

I placed it on my page (i converted it cmyk before BUT DID NOT DO ANY RESIZING) in indesign.

I didn't resize it in indesign. It looks just the way i want it.

The size according to indesign is 90.664x 50.208 mm .. i am happy with that .. fits about 1/8th of an a4... so thats what i want..

Now i haven't changed the size, this is its default size.

So it looks nice and reasonable on the screen. So i goto print with it... produce my postscript/pdf file and hand it to the printer.

Now the quality is going to be same as what i see on the screen i.e. Its crisp clean AND not blocky.?

What if i was to do the same as above but lets say if i had the same logo (EXACTLY) on a piece of high gloss original advertising material and scanned it at 300 dpi

placed it on the page at 64.132 x 67.104 mm next to the original one from the net.

What would be the issue with the original from the net and the one i scanned, Just as good????

Does this mean it is really a case of WYSIWYG i.e. what i see on my screen as far as quality wise is what is going to be printed in the print house?

Thanks again

Ian

[T***@adobeforums.com]

Ian,

I do quite a lot of books with screenshots, both in grayscale and in color. You have got all the advice of the right people. As Dov explains, it makes no sense to upsample an image: you can't get what isn't in the shot.

As Dave says, in the past it could be of use to upsample in a very specific way. But with the shots of current screens, this wil most probably only blur the image.

My experience is: Just put them on the page as is. If the shots are taken of screens with a resolution of 800x600 or higher, they most probably have to be made smaller. If you want the size of your shots in proportion to each other, make one to look as you want. In the info palette look at the actual and effective ppi. After that, you can scale the new ones to get exactly the same effective ppi.

Teus

[I***@adobeforums.com]

Thanks Teus,

I understand everything from everyone, and thanks to everyone for sticking by me.

Just 1 last question to you Teus.

If do take a snapshot at 800x600 of a screen and place it in a magazine and DO NOT make it smaller. Is this going to cause problems

Because if take a 800x600 and make it smaller then i am technically increasing the dpi?

I have always been taught not to use images from the internet due to the fact that they are 72dpi and the size from the net is probably the size i will put on the paper.. i.e. No decreasing and increasing.

Anyway, thanks once again for everybodies comments, i know this has been a bit of a long one, trying to get my brain to understnad things :-)

Ian

[T***@adobeforums.com]

You're on the right track now. Of course there's always the screening by the rip, but essentially what you're saying is right.

I have always been taught not to use images from the internet due to the
fact that they are 72dpi and the size from the net is probably the size
i will put on the paper.. i.e. No decreasing and increasing.




Most often these are not screen shots, but, e.g., photos. The effect is totally different then.

Teus

[I***@adobeforums.com]

oh stress, i think the penny just dropped.

A screen displays 72 dots per square inch - right?

Ok so if it looks good on the screen at 72dpi then when i transfer to the magazine it will look exactly the same i.e 72dpi?

so each inch on the magazine will have 72 dots.. so hence what it looks like on the screen is what it will look like on the magazine.

Have i completely lost the plot now ?? or am i on the right lines?

So when scanning at 300dpi its just being over careful .. yes it produces something better but if i am happy what i see on my screen then presto!?

Using an example of a front page glossy magazine, of course 300dpi would be better! but if i have 72dpi then

on the glossy front it will look just as good as my montior

p.s. I hope i got it now :-)

Ian

[K***@adobeforums.com]

Post by I***@adobeforums.com
Ok so if it looks good on the screen at 72dpi then when i transfer to the

magazine it will look exactly the same i.e 72dpi?


Ask yourself this: Does it *really* look good on your screen? A long time
ago you got used to what you see on your monitor, but the truth is that it's
pretty bad. My monitor looks like 72 dpi, and if I print (for example) a
page of type or a circle or a diagonal line, it always looks a whole lot
better on paper than it did on my monitor (when both are compared at the
same effective size).

But if you want to faithfully reproduce an image on your monitor *as it
looks on your monitor* (like a dialog box), then 72 dpi is appropriate. If
you want to faithfully reproduce anything else, then 300 dpi is a good
minimum for color or grayscale images and 1200 dpi is a good minimum for B&W
bitmaps. And of course, you can't add what's not there in the first place,
so if you get a 72 dpi image from the web, resampling the resolution to 300
dpi is pretty much pointless.

The important thing to remember is that screen caps (unlike most other
images) are supposed to look like your screen. Everything else is supposed
to actually look good.

Ken Benson

[I***@adobeforums.com]

thanks teus, thank god for that :-)

You say these are not screen shots .. ermm ok agreed there but sometimes a screenshot will have included on it a pciture of something i.e. a photo.. so this is ok?

So logos, screenshots, basically anything thats not an actual PHOTOGRAPH will work good.

Regarding digital cameras, if i take a picture with a digital camera (mine is 1.3 megapixels.. yep i know i need to upgrade :-) ) then these look very good quality on my screen which is 72dpi and the file my digital camera produces is 72 dpi too.

So is this going to be a problem.

Just a little confused why its totally different with PHOTOS ... if it looks good on the monitor then we are set to go are we not ... even if its 72dpi?

ian

[J***@adobeforums.com]

Post by I***@adobeforums.com
Just a little confused why its totally different with PHOTOS

The dialog boxes and other Windows screen elements were designed
specifically for viewing on a 72/96 ppi screen. The default font is chosen
with this resolution in mind, and all the graphics (icons, etc) are designed
for the screen, too.

OTOH many of the images on the web are downsampled to 72 ppi from some high
resolution, and if you look close there's missing detail, color shifts and
anti-aliasing. This is especially true for images that were once vector,
such as logos, and are now jpg. But this principle holds for photos, too.
Your eye (usually) can't see photo pixelization on screen because the screen
can only do 72/96 ppi. But on paper where you have the potential of
2540...it becomes obvious.

Have fun with your book!

-John O

[T***@adobeforums.com]

It's not only photo's. It is the other way around: only screen shots should be handled as discussed here. The rule stays that pictures from the web are unsuitable for placing in ID.

And for the digital camera: a camera tries to catch everything. That the image is pixelated is due too the restrictions of the camera, not of the subject pictured. And there lies the core of it: a screen is an assemby of pixels, so a screen shot should be the same.

Teus

[I***@adobeforums.com]

ahhh got it! Wow, thanks teus.. and everyone..

So when i capture my screen shots i will ensure i use TIFF's which don't loose quality..

Thanks once again for all your help and everybody elses!

It is very apprecaited

ian

[D***@adobeforums.com]

Ian,

Photographs need to have 1.41 - 2.0 (depending on who you talk to) as many dots per inch as the dots per inch of your linescreen on press. So, if you're printing at 150 lpi, you need an image with 212 to 300 dpi.

But, as well all know, upsampling an image that falls short of this, doesn't ever add quality and is more likely to soften and weaken the image.

So, what to do if your image falls short of this ideal resolution.

Answer: resist the temptation to upsample the image; it won't do any good.

You can scale the image down to increase the effective dpi. Rarely does a magazing run a screen shot at 100% of the size seen on screen. They might go as low as 50%, so that 72 dpi becomes 144 dpi by doing nothing to the image other than scaling it.

Back aways when I did a lot of this, I almost always needed to take the image into Photoshop to crop it, so while I was there, I would adjust the dpi without resampling to increase the effective dpi so that I could place the images at 100% in InDesign merely to simplify the workflow.

If a screen shot happens to contain a photograph, then the rules for what you need are the same as for any photograph from any source. If you print a photo from the web at 100% it will not print as crisply as the same photograph at 300dpi would. Reduce the web image in InDesign to 33% of its original size and you'll have 216dpi which falls into the desired range, but it will be small compared to the original.

I said earler that upsampling a screen shot to 200% using nearest neighbor seemed to me to help. This was for screen shots of Word and Excel from the late 90s when everything started out clunky. My impression was that because the RIP used bicubic resampling to convert the image to the dpi of the imaging device that a 2x2 black dot in a sea of white stood up better to this processing that did a single black dot; but this could have been wishful thinking on my part. I was certainly convinced that there was no point in going any further than 200%.

However, an exception to this was when the screen shot included one of those anti-aliased perfect-looking circles. They were the very devil to deal with. I used to end up practically redrawing them at something like 1600% and then reducing the result using bicubic to get something that still looked circular in print.

Hope this helps.

Off to the dentist!

Dave

[Anne-Marie Concepcion]

Ian, perhaps more important than the res of your screen shots is how you convert them from RGB to CMYK.

If you (or the production dept. who takes your files and readies them for press) use the default CMYK color settings in Photoshop/InDesign to convert to CMYK, the black in your screen shots (menu item text, for example, and palette borders and the like) will convert to a very rich black ... a black made up of the 4 process color inks.

Since screen shots are often reduced, even the tiniest misregistration on the press will result in the 4 process colors being offset slightly from each other, resulting in blurry black text and lines. I'm sure you've seen these blurry screen shots in books and magazines before.

To avoid this, you should create a custom CMYK for converting your screen shots that generates a "max black plate" ... that way, things that are black in the screen shot art get created with 100% K (or close to it) and very little of the other colors, resulting in crisp art and lines. This should only be for screen shots btw (or other scanned art that's mainly tiny black text and thin rules), not for anything else.

To create that custom CMYK setup, in Photoshop go to Edit > Color Settings, and in the top Working Spaces area, choose Custom CMYK... from the CMYK pop-up menu. In the resulting Custom CMYK dialog box, choose Maximum from the Black Generation pop-up menu, in the Separation Options section. This will get you 90% of the way there. You could even choose Custom Black Generation from the same pop-up and create your own curves if you really want to test this out. But choosing Maximum should be fine.

You could save this Custom Color Setting by clicking Save in Photoshop's Color Settings dialog box -- name it something like Screen Shots to CMYK ... and make sure you only Load it when you're about to process screen shots. Otherwise use the Prepress defaults.

So ... have that custom CMYK active when you convert your RGB screen shots to CMYK in Photoshop (by choosing Image > Mode > CMYK), and place the CMYK images in InDesign.

You can convert one original version of an RGB screen shot to CMYK with Photoshop's Prepress defaults and the same original version to CMYK with your custom settings, then place them both in ID and look at the plates with Separations Preview to see what I'm talking about.

I know first-hand that this is what many (but not all) publishers do in their production departments. In fact one of the first magazines I wrote for, many years ago, sent me their CMYK settings to Load in Photoshop to prep the screen shots I did for them.

Sandee Cohen wrote about this a while back in creativepro.com ...
<http://www.creativepro.com/story/feature/14977.html>

... scroll down halfway to "Converting RGB to CMYK" to see before/after samples of a screen shot.

AM

[Dov Isaacs]

You might be better off, however, to leave the conversion of RGB to CMYK to your prepress service provider who should know the exact printing process being used and have the appropriate workflow system and profiles to automatically handle such image conversion! Once you convert to a specific CMYK, you are stuck with a particular conversion. CMYK to C'M'Y'K' conversions are much more problematic than leaving in RGB with a source profile and then letting the prepress service provider's PDF workflow system do the one, correct RGB to CMYK conversion as part of the RIP process.

- Dov

[Mike Witherell]

PPI, everyone! Please! Dots ain't pixels.

:-)

Mike Witherell

[D***@adobeforums.com]

Pixels are an overendowed kind of dot.

Dave

[Anne-Marie Concepcion]

CMYK to C'M'Y'K' conversions are much more problematic than leaving in
RGB with a source profile and then letting the prepress service provider's
PDF workflow system do the one, correct RGB to CMYK conversion as part
of the RIP process.




I agree with the concept, Dov, but can you explain how it might work in this example? If I gave an ID file to a printer and the file has a mix of RGB images (some normal photos and some screen shots), how could I tag the screen shot files in such a way that the printer's automated processes would know to do the max black cmyk conversion (or whatever conversion they think is best for reproducing screen shots on their press) on the screen shots only, and not the photos?

I can't see a printer paging through my 200 page doc and knowing which artwork should get which type of CMYK conversion.

The source profile of my screen shots is Adobe RGB, same as my other RGB files.

Any elucidation appreciated...

AM

[I***@adobeforums.com]

thanks for the comments, i woudl like to pickup on a comment that was made before.

If i find a picture on the web that has a resolution of 2000 x 1500 .. pretty damb big!

Can i reduce it like by 500% and by reducing it then i am increasing the ppi ( :-) )

Now it is jpg but reducing it would help to hide any loss in the picture, due to lossy compression.. if there is any?

Also reducing it, should i do this in photoshop or can i just place it in my illustrator / Indesign document and SCALE it which would obviously increase the PPI??

Thanks again

Ian

[I***@adobeforums.com]

I also noticed that some professional companies offer BOX images of their product i..e Norton Antivirus... its like 1900 x something..

It is also a jpg but presume its been exported on HIGH setting... so reducing in this type of situation must work.

The pictures are available on their PRESS CENTER...

Ian