: How good is the quality of a 72dpi image in Illustrator when saved as 300dpi? I have a project I'm creating in Adobe Illustrator where I've been bringing in raster images and doing a "High-Fidelity"
I have a project I'm creating in Adobe Illustrator where I've been bringing in raster images and doing a "High-Fidelity" image trace to make them scalable and easy to manipulate. I've had some photos I brought in to the illustration that would look better as-is, but they aren't 300dpi. Most are 72dpi. For those who have seen results in print production, is a 72dpi photo saved in a 300 dpi CMYK file going to look shoddy, or will the quality be manageable. The photos don't have to look entirely life-like, but close.
I'd include specific examples, but I'd prefer not to for my client's sake.
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I've been in the print industry for fifteen years or so, and here's what I have to say:
If you zoom in to about 125% on the image at full size and it looks okay, it'll print okay. If it looks bad, then it will print badly.
The most useful tools for judging quality are your own eyes.
As the others have stated, changing a 72ppi image to a 300ppi image doesn't make the image better. That doesn't stop people from doing it all the time, though, and it'd be funny if it didn't just clog up our hard-drives and make our programs run slower.
I've been bringing in raster images and doing a "High-Fidelity" image trace
If you've traced the placed images, they are no longer raster and PPI is no longer an issue. Tracing results in vector objects which are resolution independent.
If you do not trace a placed 72ppi image in Illustrator, it outputs as a 72ppi image. Illustrator does not miraculously increase the PPI of placed raster images. The only way to increase the effective PPI within Illustrator is to scale (reduce) the placed raster image by a factor of 4 or more. This essentially "squishes" the existing pixels into a more dense area increasing the effective PPI. But be aware, Illustrator does not do any raster image interpolation.
A 72dpi (at actual size) file placed into illustrator, then said illustrator file saved out at 300dpi (at actual size) won't really improve the quality of the original 72dpi photo. It will still be, in essence, a 72dpi photo "embedded" into a 300dpi photo.
None of that is technically accurate, but hopefully explains the concept. You just can't magically make lower-resolution raster files better by resaving them at a higher resolution.
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