This is frustrating.

October 9, 2006 11:23 AM

This is a question about digital photography, magazine publishing, and confusing requests.

I am not a professional photographer! Last spring I took photographs of a politically significant event and posted them to my flickr account. Last week a regional magazine contacted me on flickr to ask if they could use these photos in their upcoming issue. I emailed them the originals, which are 1536x2048 and 180 "dpi".

They wrote back today saying they need 300 dpi and 8.5"x11". Does this mean 2550x3300? Digital photographs are not measured in inches! Dots for printing this magazine are not the same as pixels! And I cannot make my original photograph any higher resolution than it is now. It's the original.

So, what should I do? Should I just say this is the best I got? Should I change the photo to 300 "dpi" in an editor, even though it will change the dimensions... or.. something?

posted by thirteenkiller to media & arts (19 comments total)

And later I got an email saying they need originals, not retouched versions on flickr. When I sent the originals I said they were not edited at all, so .. what? And before that they send me an empty email. And before that they said they send some attachments, but there weren't any. That's why I think maybe these people don't deal with flickr sources much?
posted by thirteenkiller at 11:31 AM on October 9, 2006

They are asking for resolution that you do not have. Digital cameras do not include DPI, they just give the pixels. Your computer then decides on the DPI. If your image is 1536x3048, then at 300dpi it is 5.2"x10".

Make sense?

8.5x11 @ 300 dpi is (just multiply them) 2550x3300 pixels - or ~8.4 megapixels.
posted by SirStan at 11:33 AM on October 9, 2006

There are up-rezing applications available. Maybe a google search on that? Also you can post this question on the FredMiranda forums. www.fredmiranda.com. You will definitely get answers.
posted by spicynuts at 11:41 AM on October 9, 2006

Mind posting the URL to your flickr stream?
posted by SirStan at 11:43 AM on October 9, 2006

my Flickr

The photos in question

Originals 1 2 3
posted by thirteenkiller at 11:49 AM on October 9, 2006

This chart and the associated text should help you understand the DPI issue.
posted by matildaben at 11:49 AM on October 9, 2006 [1 favorite]

Dots for printing this magazine are not the same as pixels!

Obviously, they mean ppi not dpi. It's a common error.

Should I just say this is the best I got?

Yes. If they are competent they will know how to resample the image themselves if they need to and can stand the quality hit.
posted by grouse at 12:16 PM on October 9, 2006

Obviously, they mean ppi not dpi. It's a common error.

Probably, but I'm not sure - there is no way a magazine press can print an image at anything even approaching 300 ppi, unless they're planning on cropping and blowing up a smaller section of it, and my guess is that it's probably unusual for even pros to be shooting at 9 megapixel or higher, it doesn't seem to add up. (Of course, it's normal to want the image res to be way higher than what the printer can deliver, so that you never see pixels, only the upper limit of the printer, but 300ppi is leaning into waste-everyones-time-by-bogging-down-the-machines-for-no-gain territory IMO).

If they are competent they will know how to resample the image themselves if they need to and can stand the quality hit.

They don't sound very competent, but yeah.

They might be loading the image in a program that assumes a DPI from the exif data resolution or something?

They might be looking at the jpeg file format and assuming that that was a compression done for the web (flickr), since many pros set the camera to save in RAW or TIFF format instead of JPEG.

Maybe to cover those possibilities, uprez it and/or set any image data settings to show 300, and possibly submit it as a TIFF instead of jpeg, send that to them with a note indicating that this is the image in their requested dpi, and that they already have the originals.

But at the end of the day, they're the ones getting it wrong, not you. So if it doesn't work out, don't feel bad :)
posted by -harlequin- at 12:56 PM on October 9, 2006

Will you let us know how this works out?
posted by dance at 1:20 PM on October 9, 2006

The magazine can get the images sampled up if they need to have that done. It's weird that they want them at full page size, I should think they wouldn't be planning on running them all at that size.

Anyways, if they're asking for your usage without payment and asking you to do the sampling, I would just tell them tough cookies. When photographers I use can't get an image to the size I need, I suck it up and get it outsourced. It really isn't that expensive.
posted by Salmonberry at 1:28 PM on October 9, 2006

Well, I'm inclined to do what harlequin suggests, make it say 300dpi and save it as a tiff. Hopefully I can do that with what I have on my computer or can download easily. It's true I'm not getting paid, but it would be cool to see my stuff in a magazine.
posted by thirteenkiller at 1:34 PM on October 9, 2006

Yeah , theres lots of specs around stock photos- you gotta be nice and comply with those - you're maybe losing $1500 by not asking for payment as well.
posted by sgt.serenity at 4:14 PM on October 9, 2006

Okay.. well, I opened up the images in Corel Paint Shop Pro X. I went to the resize window and put 300 ppi and a print size of 8.25x11. It let me do all this. Now the resolution is what they want. The pictures look fine. I saved them as tiff and will now send them to the publisher.

If they accept these, I will laugh and also scream a little.
posted by thirteenkiller at 5:50 PM on October 9, 2006

A "regional magazine" might not be so picky about resolution, and the content isn't exactly fine fashion photography. I deal with lo-rez images in magazine production all the time; we've printed as low as 165dpi on national ads (the advertiser said that's all they had) and in truth it didn't look that bad, though definitely not as detailed and "full" as a higher-rez image. I routinely let anything over 200dpi go through to print.

Based on the correspondence it doesn't sound like they have their act together. You've already sent the image, but if I were in their shoes, I'd just ask for the original, highest-resolution image you have and take it from there myself. And I'd definitely not up-rez the image, as even the programs that are supposed to do this well are still making pixels up, and IMHO, not very well.
posted by rleamon at 6:21 PM on October 9, 2006

Here are the up-rezed images: 1 2 3

Comments?
posted by thirteenkiller at 6:38 PM on October 9, 2006

They certainly look great on the monitor. Perfect color balance and good exposure. Of course, how they look in print is a different story, but that is the responsibility of the magazine. Nice shots.
posted by spicynuts at 7:26 PM on October 9, 2006

So last night I sent the up-rezed images to the magazine. Today the "photography assistant" responded and said everything is okay and she will pass the photos on to the art director. I didn't tell her I up-rezed the images and made tifs out of jpegs. Maybe the art director will notice.
posted by thirteenkiller at 6:18 AM on October 10, 2006

The up-rezed photos will be printed in the magazine. Thanks everyone!
posted by thirteenkiller at 8:49 AM on October 11, 2006

Update: The magazine has now been published and I got my complementary copies. The photos look great. One of them takes up a whole page opposite the first page of the cover article. It's so cool.
posted by thirteenkiller at 7:56 AM on November 14, 2006