I often hear from people that they tried to print a digital image that was on their PC or that they downloaded from the internet and it printed blurry. They want to know how to change settings on their printer or if the image needs to be printed professionally. A professional printer will probably tell you that their output of the image will be just as blurry. Why?
Images do not often print the way they look on a computer screen.

Images are made of dots of ink when printed or electronic pixels when viewed on-screen. Pixels are small, colored squares that together form a digital image, like tiles creating a mosaic. When there are enough pixels or enough dots of ink, and they are small enough so as not to be seen individually, a digital image can achieve great photo quality.

Increased magnification of a digital image will reveal the individual pixels. Rather than tiny dots that fool the eye into seeing one uninterrupted photo, you would see blurry squares. The photo becomes a mess. This effect is often referred to as pixilation.

Resolution refers to how many dots, or pixels, are in a given amount of space. The higher an image’s resolution, meaning the more dots there are in the same amount of space, the less pixilation will occur, and the better the image will look.

The resolution of an image on your computer screen is often measured by ppi (pixels per inch). A printed image’s resolution is often measured by dpi (dots per inch). An image that is 72dpi contains less information than one that is 300dpi. Images seen on a computer screen are usually 72 ppi, because 72ppi is what most monitors display, but 300dpi is the “industry standard” for photo quality printing. This leads us to the two different levels of resolution that a designer uses; screen resolution and print resolution.

Screen Resolution: How you see an image on your computer screen depends on a couple of factors. The properties of your computer monitor need to be taken into consideration, as does the image’s quality. If an image has 16 million colors but you are viewing it on a monitor that can only display 16 colors, the image won’t appear as it should. Again, the common resolution for on-screen images is 72ppi. When a picture has more dots than the monitor can support, those dots are wasted. An image at 72ppi will look fine on your computer screen and its small file size will load quickly. A higher-resolution image (300dpi) won’t look better on your computer screen, and its large file size will make it take longer to load. Similarly, when a picture has fewer dots than the display device can support, the picture will not be as sharp.

Print resolution: This refers to how clearly an image will print. Laser printers, inkjet printers and imagesetters (used to output film for professional printing) require more information to produce a smooth and clear image than is available in a 72ppi file. Most commercial printers require an image to be at least 300 dpi or they can not guarantee the quality of the resulting printed piece.
There are two different ways to make the same digital image print at different sizes:

• Scaling – changing the physical size of the image for printing. An image has a fixed number of pixels. Imagine you have a 10-inch by 10-inch image at 72ppi, there are 720 pixels per line, and 5,184,000 pixels in the entire image. If you rescale the image to 2-inches by 2-inches, there are still 720 pixels per line, but the resolution would then be 360 ppi. The 720 pixels on each line are now only filling 2 inches of space, and therefore smaller. The image remains the same grid of 5,184,000 pixels with the same pixel data. Your image will print clearer, albeit smaller. Note that resolution and physical size are related to and directly affect one another. If you alter one, you alter the other.
• Resampling – adding or deleting pixels to change the resolution of a file. If you go back to our 10-inch by 10-inch image at 72ppi and attempt to resample the resolution to 360 ppi, the image would now have 12,960,000 pixels instead of its previous 5,184,000 pixels. The computer uses a mathematical formula, examining the current pixels to try to determine the color and location of the new pixels. The new pixels are not true to the image. They did not naturally exist in the image, and the printed result is often blurry or distorted.

Resampling changes the amount of pixels the image consists of whereas scaling changes how many pixels are being printed per inch. Resampling affects the nature of the digital image itself; scaling affects only that specific rendering of the image.

Before sending any marketing materials to print, be sure to check the resolution of your image. A file created entirely in a word processing program (Word, Publisher, etc.) instead of graphic editing software will most likely yield a 72 ppi image, and therefore a blurry print – making a poor impression on your customer.

Business owners typically know their industry better than anyone else. They know what sells, they are familiar with their clientele, and they live and breathe their business every day. So wouldn’t it make sense for a business owner to put this knowledge to good use and design their company’s logo? A better plan would be for the business owner to be directly involved in the design of their logo. Here’s why:

Know what sells
Although Jake who sells hockey sticks knows a lot about the brands he carries and what his customers want, he probably has not studied marketing tactics. He may not understand which colors give off positive connotations to his customers. If he sells online and has a large market base in Japan, he may not know how the colors of his logo can affect these customers differently. When choosing a company name or adding a slogan, Jake needs to know which words are more likely to help him sell. Will he be able to create a logo which gives the right feeling to his audience, and be effective and memorable? (Not to mention, can he draw?) One can be so close to their own product that they may not be able to give the right message to their customers. But if Jake works closely with his designer to describe the feeling of winning the big game, of holding that lucky hockey stick as you shoot a goal, and all the other things he wants his customers to think about, a good designer should be able to incorporate these elements along with marketing techniques to create a logo that shouts out the right message.

Know the techie stuff
Only a logo that is designed properly will print properly. The designer needs to understand image resolution and color process. Nothing looks less professional than a fuzzy logo on a business card! Fuzzy or grainy artwork is the result of low resolution files being used for print work. For a logo to look great when printed, it should be created with a vector based artwork program. This allows the logo to be enlarged and reduced to any size and still be consistent and print clearly. A logo should be tested in shades of grey and black and white before being finalized, so you know how it will look when Xeroxed, or when a tight budget leads to one-color printing. CMYK versions of the logo will be needed for printing, and RGB versions will be needed for online and screen usage. (For more information, see also “Raster vs. Vector Artwork: The right file type for your image”.) Having one logo saved as all these different file types is when a professional comes in handy.

Know the owner
Your logo should be yours and yours alone. If you hope to save money by using clipart to design your logo, you risk infringing upon someone else’s copyright. Most clipart can not be used for commercial purposes without a fee. Some royalty fees only pay for specific uses of the artwork (for instance, istockphoto.com specifically states in their terms that the artwork on their web site may NOT be used for logo design.) A business owner should have the comfort of knowing they are doing everything by the book. And when a designer makes your logo, be sure you own the final copyright.

If you own a business and have a great logo design idea, discuss your logo idea with a professional. You may know how to change the oil in your car, but that does not mean you have the tools to do so. And those professional mechanics will give your whole car a once over when changing the oil. When you talk to a professional about your logo, they can look at it from the point of view of a marketing professional, as someone who understands color theory, and can turn your idea or their own into a professional art piece that you can use without problems for years to come.