Wednesday, July 7, 2004
Using Bitmap Programs for Print Jobs
Posted by Jason Dunn in "THOUGHT" @ 03:00 PM
This will be heresy to the graphic designers reading this site, but for the rest of you, it's amazing what can be accomplished when you have enough pixels and a high enough PPI value - the line between vector and bitmap images starts to disappear.
For instance, common wisdom holds that business cards should be designed in a vector-based program such as Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw - something that mixes graphics with text and outputs a vector file where the text can be scaled up and down in size without a loss of quality. But what if you don't have access to that kind of software? Crank up the PPI and you'll be fine: my business cards are designed in bitmap-based programs such as PhotoImpact and Photoshop, and you'd need a magnifying glass to see the pixels. As long as you start out with a high-resolution image (I'd say 3000 x 2000 pixels or so), and you're printing at a small size, you can achieve excellent results without needing to go with a vector graphics program.
For instance, common wisdom holds that business cards should be designed in a vector-based program such as Adobe Illustrator or CorelDraw - something that mixes graphics with text and outputs a vector file where the text can be scaled up and down in size without a loss of quality. But what if you don't have access to that kind of software? Crank up the PPI and you'll be fine: my business cards are designed in bitmap-based programs such as PhotoImpact and Photoshop, and you'd need a magnifying glass to see the pixels. As long as you start out with a high-resolution image (I'd say 3000 x 2000 pixels or so), and you're printing at a small size, you can achieve excellent results without needing to go with a vector graphics program.
