Cafepress Art Books

December 7, 2004 8:14 AM

I want to use cafepress to publish a small book of black and white illustrations, maybe about 100 pages. I'm concerned that their 100mb pdf limit will result in poor image quality. This is a personal project. Has anyone made an artbook through cafepress? Were you happy with the result?
posted by quibx to media & arts (15 comments total)

I have uploaded 72dpi images for use on coffee mugs and they look as if they were printed on special film paper. I haven't used them for print materials, but I am thinking of creating a family calendar to give out, and I have the confidence it will look great. YMMV
posted by terrapin at 8:32 AM on December 7, 2004

quibx: you're actually getting files over 100mb?
posted by zelphi at 8:37 AM on December 7, 2004

zelphi- monochrome images require a much higher DPI for graphic quality- a B&W graphic runs at least 600 DPI standard for printing, as opposed to grayscales and colors at 300 DPI or even less when running on newsprint.

an 8x10" 600 DPI image can easily be over a meg; quibx wants to print a hundred of them.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 8:51 AM on December 7, 2004

Are these Black & White line illustrations or greyscale?
posted by rschroed at 9:15 AM on December 7, 2004

XQUZYPHYR- just curious, do you have a link about that? I'm curious as to _why_ a monochrome image takes up so much space. Is it due to the inability to interpolate edges into shades of gray (sorry, I don't have the vocab...)
posted by fake at 9:59 AM on December 7, 2004

No link, just the concept that filesizes are usually larger because the resolution is higher. Bitmapped (as opposed to vector-based) images store the data of what pixel has what color in it. If you have a 100 DPI square image, and the same image at 200 DPI, the doubled pixles by both length and width would make the larger resolution files four times the filesize of the other, generally. Monochrome in itself doesn't take up more space- they just need a higher resolution for quality because there's no opportunity for fading/blending of colors/tones.
posted by XQUZYPHYR at 10:06 AM on December 7, 2004

Yeah, its lineart. I'm just thinking that the scans are going to be over 1 meg each...

I'm going to try it and see, but I was curious if anyone had any experiences. Typically, like XQUZYPHYR said, the files are large.
posted by quibx at 10:22 AM on December 7, 2004

Where is this book option you speak of? I can't find that as a valid product on the cafe press site.
posted by agregoli at 11:17 AM on December 7, 2004

Could you use something like potrace to vectorize the lineart? That should cut way down on the file size.
posted by sonofsamiam at 11:25 AM on December 7, 2004

they just need a higher resolution for quality because there's no opportunity for fading/blending of colors/tones.


ahhh, that's what i suspected. thanks. good luck, quibx, sorry for the derail.
posted by fake at 11:30 AM on December 7, 2004

agregoli:

Sell your book:

http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/sell/
posted by quibx at 11:35 AM on December 7, 2004

oops, sorry, it's http://www.cafepress.com/cp/info/sell/books.aspx
posted by quibx at 11:36 AM on December 7, 2004

Do they mention what type of printer they're using?

If I had to guess I say it's a Xerox DocuTech 120 or similar. If so, you don't as high res as you would for offset, you'll get pretty good results from even 300dpi.

I'd suggest running a sample book. For example: 4 pages with the same image @ 150, 300, 600, 1200 dpi
posted by rschroed at 12:04 PM on December 7, 2004

You can also use utilities to slim down PDFs for printing. You do know about Reduce File Size... in the full Acrobat, right?
posted by joeclark at 12:33 PM on December 7, 2004

What about Lulu? I just checked their site, and can't seem to find anything about a file size limit. You'ld probably have to email them though.
posted by maledictory at 2:44 PM on December 7, 2004