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Common Media Specifications

Print:

Commercial printers all have their own special requirements and should be consulted as early as possible in a project. Some common requirements the self publisher will encounter on a regular basis are:

• Files submitted for printing should be in a ‘press ready’ PDF format. These are not the same as office software PDF files and are created with Adobe Distiller after the design is completed using other software.
• Photographs and graphics have to be in or converted to four colour CMYK (Cyan,Magenta,Yellow,Black) format, to match standard printing inks.
• Photograph resolution should be at least, 150dpi (dots per inch) for newspaper, 300dpi for catalogue type semi-gloss paper, 600dpi for high quality magazine or poster.
  How big this is in megapixels will depend on the final print size of the image.
• If artwork will be larger than original size it needs to in a scalable vector graphic format, ie. Adobe Illustrator or Coral Draw, or it has to be redrawn at final size.
• Fonts for commercial printing should be Type 1 Postscript or Open Type formats, not True Type which is primarily for computer screens, and the publisher needs to have the appropriate licenses for the fonts used.
• If the final design is for inclusion in a third party publication, such as newspapers or magazines, the layout should be created with that publisher’s colour-sync profile registered in the design software. In simple terms, this accounts for the different shades of white that vary between paper types.

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Web:

To reduce bandwidth costs and fast page loading, all files should be as small as possible. You may not have noticed bandwidth costs, but all web hosts set limits, above which they charge they extra. And nobody likes waiting to view a website.

• Pictures and graphics should be between 72dpi (dots per inch) and 95dpi. Anything less will result in blurring and anything more is wasted data, because monitors only show up to 95dpi.
• Colour images should be in RGB (Red, Green, Blue) format, to match that produced by computer screens.
• Photographs should be reduced to final size, not reduced by HTML width and height settings, because this also wastes bandwidth. And be in jpeg format.
• Artwork files should be in either gif or png formats, because jpeg files blur straight lines and turn lettering fizzy. Also, simplistic artwork, such as logos, should have unused colours removed from the file by reducing the colour gamut setting.
• When creating web pages be aware that different screen sizes and internet browsers each affect how the layout will be displayed.

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Video:

There are no specific technical requirements for video production as the quality of the equipment determines the quality of the final images.
As a general guide, usable internet video can be made from cameras as basic as web cams or mobile phones. To achieve standard definition broadcast quality, minimum camera specification can found in high-end consumer camcorders with separate colour processors, one each for red, green and blue, that output Digital Video (.dv) files. High definition quality obviously requires such a camera

In addition to resolution the size of lense and degree of manual functionality will affect both the ease and accuracy of operation plus the quality of light recorded by the image processors.

Beyond a camera’s technical capabilities, other photographic and theatrical aspects play a large role in determining the suitability of the footage. For example, an expert lighting setup and a cheap camera can produce better images than an expensive HD camera with a poorly lit subject. Also, if the video is to be edited by a third party then the original camera footage should be supplied, in the camera’s proprietary format, because every conversion from one format to another reduces the quality.