what dpi do you use? (for print comics)

[gazorenzoku]

This question goes out to those who have printed, will print, or are thinking about maybe printing:

A long time ago, I heard that for printing anything over 300 dpi was good. More recently, I have read that 600 dpi is good for comics. I have also read that the dpi should be determined by the size of the file and the conditions that your printer gives you...

A little while ago I started to work on a file at 600 dpi, but bumped it up to 900 dpi after talking to someone who does comics for cash. It takes soooooo long to work with 900 dpi files... the million dollar question: is it worth it?

Of course, I can't tell the difference between 600 and 900 dpi, but I wonder if somewhere down the road it will make a difference......

What dpi do you use?

Vince

[japanimationfist]

I've asked around, and it really depends on what your computer can handle. Newspapers generally print at 172 dpi, and magazines at 600 dpi. If you don't see the difference between 600 and 900, I would stick with 600 for the sake of making the files easier to work with. Are you using tiff's?

By the way, I am still keen for the one hour comic, and will get back to you about it this week. My 24 hour comic should be going up as part of the solitary confinement event at Altbrand sometime very soon.

[gazorenzoku]

Hey, Japanamationfist, what a suprise!

Thanks for the input.... yeah, I am leaning towards going back to the 600 dpi. I am still at 900, just to be safe... but I have already given up using an extra layer to make the colors on. I now just work with one layer only (and save the original scanned black and white art as a seperate file).

The guy who does it at 900 dpi, by the way, is Jason Little of Bee Comix at: http://www.beecomix.com . His work is great!!! Of course, he reduces to 72 dpi for the net, so don't worry about the download time.

I am saving first in PDF format, and then in a variety of other formats for different things. I save in jpg, gif, and png for the online comics. I print on my desktop directly from the pdf format. I checked the Brenner Printing guide and they said that they want pdf files if possible... though it will be a long time before I print professionally... (Brenner Printing, for those who don't know it, is one of the professional comics printing companies. I don't know exactly which comics they print, but it seems like they might be the ones who do Marvel & DC comics.... Anyhow, the good thing about them is that they are set up to do comics specifically, and that is their specialty, so they usually know more about it than the beginner, and they also probably have better prices than printing companies that don't usually print comics)

Can't wait to hear about the 1 hour comic rules! I am looking forward to doing one!

Vince

[Guest]

I wound up using mostly 600 dpi for the comic. I am awaiting the test copy from Kinko's now (since I live in Japan, it will take a week or two to get here).

The new comic I started at will be entirely at 600 dpi (or maybe even less for pages that don't contain scanned in art).

I want to work at 400 dpi, but the lines just look too "pixelly" when I print it out....

What are other people out there doing?

[gazorenzoku]

that last post was me....

vince

[Randy]

Ok, here's how you figure out what DPI to use:
1. Figure out what Line Screen (Line Ruling) that you are going to be outputting. If its going to end up on a copier the lpi is going to be about 72 lpi. If you are going to be printing the book with a professional printer contact them to find out what lpi they are going to use. Most likely it will be 150 lpi.
2. Once you know the lpi, you double it and you get the dpi that you need to save the image as. Any more info is a waste, and any less has a drop of quality.

Please note that line art that is saved as grayscale images will look bad. They should be saved as Bitmapped files.

Please Private message me if you have any questions, as I may not check this topic again.

I hope that this helped.

later,
Randy

[gazorenzoku]

I have heard that thing about doubling the lpi before, but for some reason any line work I scan in at less than 600 dpi doesn't look good when I print it out.... I wil give your suggestion a try, though.

vince

[Randy]

What program are you using for image editing?

[gazorenzoku]

I use Photoshop. I would like to try using Illustrator or something like that as well, but all I have now is Photoshop....

I just realized today that I should check the lpi on my printer, which is what I use before making copies....

When I scan in greyscale mode, any dpi looks just fine. But then of course there are lots of grey pixels, and even if you run a level correction or whatever it is called, it still is just that little bit farther away from the original line. So I scan in bitmap mode, which seems to look horrible at anything less than 400 dpi. 600 dpi seems to give the best results if I just scan in a page and then print it out without altering anything....

I'll check on the lpi for my printer and see what that brings about.....

vince

[Randy]

LPI is assigned by the software that you are printing from, not from the printer. When you output the file tell it to be the LPI that you want it to be.

And please scan in grayscale, then use Threshold to make it line art, then change the document mode to bitmap. This will sharpen the image and make it look better.

later,
Randy

[Buck Beaver]

I used to do a lot of digital pre-press when I was a graphic designer for a retail chain and I had to prepare work to be printed in a multitude of formats (newpaper, magazine, poster, etc.) and - except for maybe two or three very special cases) I always worked at 600 dpi and then knocked files down afterwards if the printer needed a lower resolution.

If you don't know what your printer will need (or if you don't have one yet) you probably can't go wrong at 600 dpi.

My poor little machine would DIE at 900 dpi.