Question about Photoshop Document Resolution and Print

[Chrisopolis]

Hi Everyone,

This is my first time posting here but I have an illustrator friend that's made extensive use of the expertise in this forum so I figured I might be able to get some guidance for my question.

I'm illustrating a children's book and have a question about resolution. The primary illustrator in my team has been creating the original Photoshop document in Vector format at 26" x 26" at 400dpi so far. The idea being that we can scale the images down to 8.5" x 8.5" for print and also have the option to use the images for promotional print if such a thing is desired.

Now, here's the issue my friend brought up. Even when illustrating as Vector artwork, when you shrink the pages it converts them from vector to anti-alias and therefore loses the quality and crispness. Since it's unlikely we'll need to use any of the books pages for poster prints or billboards :P would is be better for us to drop the page size of the ORIGINAL Photoshop documents down to the 8.5" x 8.5" (the print size) while we're creating them? Maybe increase the resolution, but keep the page size at what it will end up being?

Let me know if you have any questions, any help or suggestions you guys can offer would be greatly appreciated. This will be our first published book.

Thanks!

Chris

What Box? Studio

[dfbovey]

It's not a vector graphic if it's created in Photoshop. Photoshop is pixel based where Illustrator is vector based.

It would be better to work in Illustrator and send the print shop EPS files in CMYK mode, which would be a true vector image. That way you can scale the art to whatever size you need with no loss in quality due to resolution.

[Chrisopolis]

Thanks for your reply Dfbovey, and I stand corrected on calling it "vector" in PS

However, right now illustrator isn't a tool we have access to, so given that we're working in PS, do you think it would be better to work BIG, then scale down like we've been doing? Or work at the actual print size?

While working in PS we've been using all non-antialiasing methods, tools and preferences which - I forget where - we've learned is the best way to get high quality prints out of PS. So until we are able to learn to work with illustrator at some point, we're "stuck" making Photoshop work the best way we can.

Thus the reason for my original post

With that in mind, any recommendations?

[dfbovey]

If it were me, I'd probably work at print size and if need for promotional material arose, I'd probably design and illustrate something specific for that purpose. Or maybe just design the covers oversized.

Another option, if you have something that you might want blown up for promo purposes... is use a third party software to convert the pixel based image to a vector, that way you can scale it as needed. I think if you do a search here, someone posted a link to an online service that does it for free.