Preflight Profiles Continued

The above graphic shows tags for Profiles and scaling of placed objects. With the mention of the International Color Consortium (ICC) many eyes start to glaze over. What is an ICC profile and how do you use it? ICC profiles are a set of standards that are agreed upon by about 70 vendors attempting to bring consistency between devices. When an image is taken with a digital camera, downloaded to a computer, manipulated with software, and sent to a printer there is some chain of command that dictates the transition of that file from one medium to another. There are many variables and the conversion of one profile to another has many other variables. Suffice it to say that if your printer has a profile for you to use then use it.

Notice the first item is non-proportional scaling. When you drag the corner of an object to shrink it down and don't use the shift key you and skew or squash the object. Sometimes even when using the shift key if you let your finger off the key a fraction of a second before you unclick then the file may be skewed. The contextual pop-up menu (by right clicking or control clicking) can bring up the "fitting" menu (along with edits, transforms, effects...) and one option that may help is fill frame proportionally.


The next section on Resolution, the above graphic is sure to stir controversy. 300 ppi (Pixels Per Inch) has been the standard for many years and still should be. However, depending on the output method, the subject matter of the photography, the physical size of the place image, and the source of the file this may not be realistic. A crowded shot of a Victorian home my be fine at 200 ppi but sagging telephone lines against a clear blue sky may look jagged and pixelated at that resolution. The biggest problem I usually see is that an image placed from Photoshop at 2x3 inches at 300 is often scaled up to 4x6 inches in InDesign. As the image size doubles the effective resolution drops to 150 ppi from 300 ppi.

Taking a small image in Photoshop and scaling it up to a larger size, while leaving the resample button checked, is only adding pixels based on their neighbors. It would be like taking a neighborhood of 100 homes and doubling it to 200 homes but using cardboard cut-outs instead of actually building new homes. Not a good idea!