Graphics

Line Art

For line art, we prefer EPS files. Logos which have less than ten solid colors would generally be considered line art. If you cannot send us EPS files, then send us either .png files or .gif files. Make these files as large as possible. 2000 pixels x 2000 pixels would be good. Only as a last resort send us .jpg files. If when you save the file as an EPS file, it is larger than a megabyte, then we would prefer that you send it as a .png or .gif file. Any fonts in your file should be converted to files or outlines.

We can use Quark Xpress and Adobe Illustrator files as well. Corel Draw files should only be sent as a last resort, and should be saved to version 9 or version 7. Do not forget to convert fonts to curves before saving.

Photographs

For photographs, we prefer that you email us a .jpg of about 2000 x 2000 pixels. In addition, we would like a CD containing the file in .tiff format at 200 dpi (dots per inch). A 200 dpi file for a 1 m by 2 m logo panel would be 8000 x 16000 pixels. If you save that uncompressed it will take up about 384 MB. Please send us a CD that is readable on a PC. For large graphics that will only be seen at a distance, 100 dpi is good enough.

If you cannot send us a CD, you can zip the above .tiff file using a program such as Winzip and email it to us. The resulting size should be about 5MB. If it is not, then please discuss it with us. If you have a modem connection to the internet, it should take an hour to send a 5MB file. There is a possibility that emailing such a large file will cause problems with the email programs.

We have an ftp site to which you can upload large graphic files up to about 200MB in size. We will send you account information by email.

Technical Information

We include the following technical information to enable you to come up with a reasonable alternative if the above directions are not helpful.

There are two types of graphics files. Vector and Bitmap. A vector file stores step by step instructions about how to draw the graphic. It is similar to a recipe. It allows you to reproduce the graphic at any size without loss of quality. A bitmap file is like a photograph of the graphic. You can reduce the picture, but when you blow it up larger than the original you will start seeing individual pixels.

A vector file can store line art. A bitmap file can store any sort of picture.

Vector files stay the same size no matter how large your final graphic. A bitmap file requires a separate dot for each bit of detail so the bigger your final graphic the larger your file. Large graphics take up a lot of space.

EPS files are vector files, therefore they can be used to store logos that must be blown up to a large size. However, they can also store bitmaps. You must be sure when saving something to an EPS file  that it is being stored as a vector file, because otherwise one of the bitmap formats will do a better job.

TIFF (.tif or .tiff) files are bitmap files. They store individual dots. As mentioned above, they can take up a lot of space. There is the option of compressing tiff files, but they are not completely standard, so if you compress it, we might not be able to uncompress it. Using an external program such as Winzip will work: it is an extra step and might be difficult for you if you are not comfortable with using such a program.

GIF files are good for bitmap versions of line art. They have the drawback that they can store a maximum of 256 colors, so they are not good for photographs. They also do not work well for very large files.

PNG files are similar to gif files. They can store 16 million colors, so they can be used for photographs. However, photographs do not compress as well with the png format as they do with the jpg format. They are also not so good for very large files because programs currently have difficulty decompressing very large png files.

JPEG (.jpg or .jpeg) files are good for photographs. They take a bitmap and compress it by losing some of the quality. However, the resulting quality is much better than taking a small bitmap and enlarging it. The more compression you use on a jpg file, the poorer the resulting quality. Programs currently have difficulty with very large JPEG files.

ZIP (.zip) files store other files in a compressed format. They can handle very large files. You can use them to compress even very large EPS or uncompressed TIFF files. They will not do much for GIF, PNG, or JPEG files as those files are already compressed.