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2 Biggest Mistakes You Can Make in Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is the standard in our industry. Installing your first full-retail version will give you a feeling of pride almost as big as your first professional camera.
That’s why it is important that when you start using Photoshop, you don’t commit either of the two biggest mistakes most new users make:
1. Wrong DPI. When you click File -> New in Photoshop, by default your image is set at 72dpi (dots per inch). New photographers typically set a height and width in inches, then ignore the dpi.
For 99% of the work you do, you should set Photoshop to 300dpi first, then enter a height and width. For images that will end up as banners, you can set Photoshop to 150dpi, since this is the resolution of most large-format inkjet printers like the 52″ one we use to create wall graphics.
2. Wrong JPG Quality. When you save a final image for printing in Photoshop as a JPG file, by default Photoshop chooses 6 (medium) for image quality. This should always be moved to 12. In addition, if you are saving a copy that you plan to work on again later, you should save the image as a .PSD file. Only your final image that you plan to send to us should be saved as a JPG.
Making both these changes will result in very large files, which is why you should have a PC with lots of RAM (3-4Gb is a good start for PCs), but it will also insure that your images look their best when they are printed.
Tags: photoshop
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AlliedMedia.net
December 18th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
Tom, Great advice and well presented. Only one small thing. The ram should be 4Gigs and not 4 Megs, OOps…
December 18th, 2009 at 2:56 pm
All very factual and correct except for one very important point. You getting a kick back from IBM pushing the PC vs Mac issue?!!
Happy holidays for whom ever gets to read this
Greg
December 18th, 2009 at 3:30 pm
(4Mb is a good start for PCs)
4 Mb may have been true 6 or 7 years ago, but today I suspect the recommended RAM would be closer to 3 gigs – the max using XP operating system… I currently have 5 gigs RAM on my Windows 7 64 bit system, and my use of photoshop is very small compared to most photographers.
Hugh McLean
December 18th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
Tom is in the clear – I miss-typed “Mb” when I read “Gb.” Please chalk this up to a senior moment from a guy who actually remembers when 4Mb was a lot of RAM!
- Mark
December 18th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
Thanks for the tips, I learned the hard way so I’m sure there will be other photographers out there doing the same. My questions is….Does anyone know why my pixels wont change to inches. For example, when I use my crop tool, I can’t change my drop down menu to read inches. It stays on pixels. So I am unable to do what I need with the crop tool, until I figure this out. AnY HELP out there????
Thank YOu
–Ari
December 19th, 2009 at 2:21 pm
I see I have just the right bunch to respond to my question: I was recently told (by a photographer) to NOT fill in the DPI in Photoshop when cropping an image to an 8×10 or smaller. The assertion was that to create a 5×7 @300 dpi would direct Photoshop to insert more dpi than the native resolution of the original camera file.
I’ve always done what Tom described, so was this other guy confused? Thanks!
December 19th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
Hi All,
Help me here, please. Mb is the abbreviation for megabits is it not? MB is megabytes, right? So Gb is gigabits and GB is gigabytes? I would like to see an end to the use of the term “bits”. The bits/bytes issue is always going to be confusing.
Also, from #1 above, isn’t it important to be sure that you are not allowing PS to add file size when you set up an image size? If you want to make a 20×24 portrait from a 10 MP camera and you set up 20×24 at 300dpi, you will be telling PS to add a lot of data. Isn’t is best for image quality and sharpness to send images to your lab unboosted and let your lab work the files? At times I have sent files to my lab with as few as 120 dpi (or less) and have let the lab do the boosting. The results are always good.
December 20th, 2009 at 7:51 pm
Ari – you can set this in preferences.
December 21st, 2009 at 10:27 pm
Rick & John – the article was about creating a new image in Photoshop. For example, when creating a custom composite or a dust jacket for a photo book.
In both your examples, you’re opening a digital camera image in Photoshop. You should not change the DPI or resize the file. Instead, just send us the original best quality JPG from your camera, and use ROES to crop or to order a 20×20″ print. We take care of the DPI and resizing in the lab.
Thanks for the clarification.
December 25th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
I am about to undertake a large print for a client and wondered about how to prep the photo so as to keep the print quality. How do I keep the high resolution when converting to JPEG? I want to avoid the grainy outcome. Just read the last comment. If saving at 12 resolution and then copying to JPEG, will that keep the quality of the image intact?
January 5th, 2010 at 12:43 am
Cathy – you’re correct. Saving the images as JPG files, quality 12, is what you need to do.
However, print quality depends on many things. For example, saving a low resolution image as a JPG quality 12 won’t make it a high resolution image, it will just be a good copy of a low resolution image.