: How can I ensure my photographic artwork is a high quality when printed I make personalised story books for children. My books use a photo of the child's face inserted into the illustration

@Si6392903

Ok. As Joojaa say, you do not need the 300ppi (the correct unit is ppi, not dpi)

I would say that you can use inclusive lower resolution images in extreme cases if you are printing them directly. Agree that 200 ppi will do fine.

If the child's face is about 4cm that is 354x472 pixels or 236x315 px at 200ppi which is really small!

But that resolution (300, 200 ppi) is not the resolution you need to ask to your customers.

You need to ask in terms of image size so that is easier to understand. Use Megapixels, which most people is familiar with. For example, a low end camera of 6 Megapixels, makes a photo of 3000x2000, if you post an example image of the typical frame you need, you have an excelent resolution and a more standarized framing.

Most newbie parents frame like this:



With a 6Mpx camera you have a head after cropping like 3000/6 = 500px, which is good size.

But if you ask this framing, there is no mistake.



As I did on this post, explain in more simple terms the file size you need, not technical units, which are confusing for most people.

(P.S. you can always apply some shaprening on the image, so the details of that small face shows.)

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@Barnes313

This is where you need to build validation on when you receive source files. Whoever built your site can implement a validation uploader in the contact form unless you built it. If you built your own site or use a template site hosting solution you could do a Q&A before you send it to the printer with ImageMagick or if you use Mac use Sips. If the source files are being sent through FTP depending on how you pick them up you could even script a review script in shell. One thing I always explain to client when I receive files is I can always scale down but I cannot scale up.

Sips Example

sips -g dpiHeight -g dpiWidth


ImageMagick Example

convert image -depth 300 -units pixelsperinch resultimage

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@Yeniel278

Simply in general you can not. However the 300 dpi (or PPI to be exact) is far less fixed than people tell you*, 200 DPI could be ok. Certainly, better than nothing. You could try to expand the image. The printer, kind of, does this if you dont do it. But by doing it yourself you can sometimes achieve better solutions.

* It is lies to children of sorts.

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