Tips to Scan + Save + Share
You’ve hired a creative professional to work on your website, post to social media, and create a brochure. You need to provide pictures, but what should you send?
In this guide, I’ll give you the big picture on preparing your pictures to hand over to a designer.
My first suggestion is to hire a professional photographer! That’s how you are going to get the best results. If that is not in the budget, then here are some technical suggestions for you to follow.
Logos or Line Art Illustrations
- Provide a logo that is a VECTOR file: This means that you can change the size of the logo to be as large as a billboard or as small as a social media profile image.
- Vector files are typically .EPS or .AI.
- Don’t have a logo? Get one designed that reflects your brand. A unique mark that represents your company is an investment in the future success or your business. (More on that in another post.)
Pictures
Images need to be large enough, and of a high enough quality, to display your brand favorably. Always keep in mind your target audience, the customers in need of what you have to offer. It’s true; a picture is worth a thousand words!
- Images can be sent as .JPEG or .TIF; these are the most common. Many others will work such as .PNG, .RAW, .PNG, etc. All of these files are referred to as RASTER art.
- When an image is going to be printed it needs to be 300 dots per inch (DPI). This specification is required for a picture to print sharp and clear. Less than that and your image will be blurry.
- Images viewed on screen need to be 72 DPI. On screen, you have more liberty to use smaller images because they don’t require as many pixels to be clear.
So how do you prepare your pictures?
Give your designer the largest images you possibly can. You’ll be glad you did. The larger the pictures, the more flexibility your designer will have to display your products and services.
- Scan images at 300 DPI.
- Set the size to 8×10 inches. If you can go bigger – do it!
Color
Provide your pictures in color. Leave it to your designer to change the color profile on the images. Do not alter them to black and white. You can have a color image and make it black and white, but it doesn’t work in the other direction. Resist the urge to add filters to the original picture.
- Images viewed on screen need to be RGB.
- Images in print need to be CMYK.
Sharing Your Image Files
You have your images scanned and ready to go. Most likely these are pretty large files. Most email programs are limited by how large attachments can be. A standard rule I follow is: If the attachment is greater than 9MB don’t try to email it. There are lots of sharing sites available. My go-to happens to be Dropbox.com. It is relatively easy to share files on this website and restrictions are very flexible.
Now go! Search your shoeboxes and phone’s photo library and share all the goodies you can find!
CREATIVE SERVICES
Brand Management
- brand strategy
- identity design (logos)
- brand standards
Graphic Design
- newsletters
- promotional material
- packaging
- digital + print advertisements
- swag
Environmental Design
- signs
- tradeshows
- exhibit planning
Marketing
- plan development
- strategy
- execution
Online Representation
- website design
- WordPress development
- Wix development
- social media marketing
- search engine optimization (SEO)
- email blast