Children's Picture Book Files

[Stormseye]

Hi All,

An age old question here. I'm putting together a children's book which may or may not be put out by a large publishing house. Full color images from digital files. I know from what I've read and through experience that, with smaller presses, 300 dpi seems just dandy, and I can usually even get away with a bit lower than that as long as there isn't any enlargement involved. I'll be working at 100%.

So, with these large high run presses, do I need to prepare the file at a higher resolution? I imagine it will be transferred to film, or maybe directly to plates, but I'm not sure. Has anyone had experience with book covers or children's books? I don't want to loose quality during the output, or have the quality killed because I didn't prepare properly.

Thank you!

[ben c]

if it is being done by a "real" publisher (you know what i mean), and especially if the art is print-size (100%), please do NOT do 300dpi. that works for printing sketchbooks off a laser printer etc, but for professional offset printing from some printing plant in china, it's not good enough. (i'm not trying to be a dick, i've done sketchbooks and kid's books and comics.) ideally you should do 600dpi. if that's too big for your computer, and the art style is more painterly (not crisp, inked lines) then you can get away with generating the art at 450dpi, then taking the final, flattened art up to 600dpi to save as a final file.

also keep in mind that there might be promotional and other supplemental material that blows up the art, so you want it to be better than the minimum. and likewise, it's not unusual to reuse art at a different scale for the title page, back cover etc. oh, and the publisher's catalogs, too!

and good luck/congratulations!

ben c

[Stormseye]

Hi Ben,

Great! Just the kind of experienced input I was looking for! Thanks so much for taking the time to reply with this information. I'm glad I asked before I got down to business with the final pieces. I really appreciate it.

[Stormseye]

By the way, I was just exploring your site. Beautiful work.