Alice Designs - How important are colour pictures to you?

This week I have been preparing the images for a recipe book. One of the important considerations about publishing books is to work hard towards how attractive it is as well as legible and readable (which are not the same).

The pictures should not only be relevant, colourful, positioned well within their frame, good quality focus, have a focal point suitable for the subject and be explanatory, they need to be suitably prepared for the printing process.

In the case of this book, each recipe needed its own picture, as well as a consistent layout to facilitate finding the ingredients, temperature and timing details and method of cooking at a glance, without having to spend precious seconds searching for it. The picture was equally positioned for scanning purposes, and its quality and presentation is vital to encourage the reader to cook that particular recipe.

Each picture was taken by a digital camera, which means they had to be adapted for print. The two main criteria are how many dots per square inch (dpi) and what colour mode it is in. Digital cameras are designed for screens and the web, so the pictures will most likely be in 72 or 96 dpi and the colour mode would be RGB (red, green and blue), the ‘light’ colours.

All this needed to be changed for print (preferably through using Photoshop) to 300 dpi and CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow and black), the ink colours. Viewed on your computer the changed photograph therefore becomes huge (bigger than your screen) and a funny colour – this is because your screen is adapted for the RGB state. The picture can be resized to its correct dimensions and checked with ‘view to print’, and once you are satisfied, it can then be incorporated into your design with confidence that the finished book will contain pictures with more depth, better colour quality and a professional appearance.

If you would like to know more about how to compile a great looking publication ready for the printers, then go ask Alice!