One particular publisher had the following situation, Adverts that were being supplied by their clients, would arrive with a much higher resolution than was required for the printing process.
The newspaper publisher described this as a “fail safe option”! But it added a significant amount of time to the process and added nothing to the quality on the page.Adverts were sent in via FTP, dedicated e-mail and CD/DVD and were specified with a 300 dots per inch (dpi) resolution. Up to a third of the advert data was not required, and is subsequently discarded when the page was finally printed to plate.
This unnecessary data will still have to be RIP’d, and could significantly add to the time it takes to send this page to the print site, which means late press starts, and late copy on the streets.
The table below shows the dramatic savings by using a 200 dpi resolution, for a one hundred line screen output.
Dots / Inch |
Size in cm |
Size in Mb  RGB |
Size in Mb CMYK |
300 dpi |
35 cm x 45 cm |
62.9 Mb |
83.8 Mb |
200 dpi |
35 cm x 45 cm |
27.9 Mb |
37.2 Mb |
300 dpi |
25 cm x 35 cm |
34.9 Mb |
46.6 Mb |
200 dpi |
25 cm x 35 cm |
15.5 Mb |
20.7 Mb |
300 dpi |
15 cm x 25 cm |
15.0 Mb |
20.0 Mb |
200 dpi |
15 cm x 25 cm |
6.65 Mb |
8.87 Mb |
Items marked in Red show that they are significantly larger than, what would normally be required for a 100 line screen output.
The above scenario can also be applied to images for editorial, exactly the same table above can be applied to editorial images, the delays will still be the same.
Colour Splash Recommendation
When scanning any original for printing, always ensure you have enough data for you magazine operation and for future use when recalling from an archive. But for your newspaper it should be cropped with the exact resolution required. Even a 200 dpi resolution allows for a 25% increment in scale on a page with out any detriment to the visual reproduction.