Digital mag submission

[Gabe]

I'm submitting some work to American Photo for their annual photo contest. I've had digital photos published before, but they're pretty specific about size and dpi and I want to make sure I get it right.

Namely, they want 350dpi and a size of at least 8x12. When I res up the photos from 180, going 5% at a time like I learned here, they get a little noisy but mostly they just lose sharpness. That's when I'm viewing them at full size on my monitor. When I take them down to 50% or less so they fit on the screen, they're razor-sharp and noiseless again. Will this be a problem? I guess this means the original wasn't as sharp as I thought?

Also, at 350dpi they have a "document size" of 7.5 by 11.6 inches, roughly... should I uncheck "Constrain Proportions" (using PS 7) and just make that into 8x12? It's certainly not a big jump and doesn't seem to affect quality further.

Thanks!

[Peter_AUS]

Except if you don't constrain the proportions then you will get it a little screwy.

Scott Kelby recommends using upsize by 10% increments not 5%.

Why not make them over 8 x 12 and then crop them to 8 x 12.

Are you viewing them as sRGB, Adobe 1998 RGB, or in the printing format they will require the images to be in like CMYK.

You could use something like Noise Ninja to fix up the noise too. When looking at your images you should look at them at 100% as that is how they will look printed, remember that. I wonder if they request that size, so they can down size them to the size they want and that takes care of the noise too.

[Gabe]

Thanks, Peter. I'll try ressing up at 10% then. I still haven't saved any photos after the res work - they're all at 180 right now.

Document size increases relative to resolution, no? At 350 I can only get them to the numbers above.

The guidelines say they want them in RGB, I'm doing Adobe 1998 RGB as a color profile if I remember right (gotta check), will this be a problem? They get saved as RGB files.

As for sizing, American Photo is a little oversized - about 9x11 - so if they should use the photo as a full bleed or a cover (gasp!) they would need the bigger size. I still have trouble figuring out how a huge file like a 350dpi photo can look so huge on my screen at 100%, but will only print at 8x12. And at that size, relative to the screen (took a ruler to the monitor once and reduced the viewing size till it was about 8x10) there is no noise and it's as sharp as I originally thought it.