Photoshop quality question

[Hituro]

I'm designing artwork at 300Dpi in photoshop.  Is it going to look really bad since it isn't vector art?  Can I still get a nice look, or does everyone recommend using Illustrator?  Just not sure how to get some character art into a vector format.  Mostly using large image files I'm finding on the web.

[opt2not]

Depends on what size you're printing out.

[Hituro]

It's for the side art and for my 4 player control panel =x  I mean the pieces in the artwork aren't huge, but the overall dimension of the control panel are.  But it's a bunch of little things stuck together.

[Sjaak]

Depends on what size you're printing out.

Actually, it depends on the resolution of the printer. If you're printing on a 300 dpi printer, then working in photoshop at 300 dpi is fine.

[thatitalian]

It depends on the image. Solid colours and shapes are good in illustrator but detailed images with lots of styling and gradients would be incredibly difficult to replicate in illustrator, hence photoshop.

300DPI is fine in most cases but again, Sjaak is spot on - it really depends on the printer. Are the original images in 300DPI? Most people just get images of the net and then throw them into a 300DPI document thinking they are now 300DPI.

[Blanka]

And stay away from lossy compression. JPEG can kill edges of solid filled shapes pretty badly.

[Triangel7D]

Things to consider:

1) Once you've imported your web pictures into your 300 dpi Photoshop file, did you ever expand any of those pictures within the document? Remember, you can't add dpi on those pictures (despite what every sci-fi and spy tv show will tell you about "enhancing" an image).

2) A good way to test the quality of your art (the dpi and such) is to view the image in Photoshop at 100% (enter 100 into the little box on the bottom left). If you can't see any obvious degradation of the image (pixelization), then it should be okay.

3) Vectors are always better, especially for a lot of the classic characters (as long as the vector trace is decent). You could blow those up to the size of a side of a building and they'd still look good. This art is usually found in AI, EPS and PDF format and can be imported into Illustrator. I'd recommend this. I just finished my character collages, and they only have 3 characters that are non-vector (see my avatar).

4) Most of the large format printers I've encountered (mostly HP) have been 120dpi. I've even gone down to 72dpi and it still looked "okay" (although I personally wouldn't go below 100dpi). Whenever I was forced to use web images in my my old graphic design job, I used to create a file to the size I wanted in Photoshop at 120dpi (100 if I was desperate), and then import my web photos NEVER sizing them up.

Hope that helps. See if you can get your hands on Illustrator. You'll like the results.

[opt2not]

Don't forget to convert your colours from RGB to CMYK before printing.

[Triangel7D]

Don't forget to convert your colours from RGB to CMYK before printing.

Actually, this is another "depends on the printer" thing. A lot of large format printers these days actually interpret RGB out-of-gamut colors (like R:255 G:0 B:0) better and brighter than their CMYK equivalent (C:0 M:100 Y:100 K:0). I was so used to converting to CMYK for print houses, It took me years to realize that RGB to our in-house large format would have been better for certain things. These days, my rule is design in RGB and test at the end.

In fact, I had accidentally designed my marquee in CMYK and the rest of the art in RGB. My vector characters all had duller character colors that could not be recovered. I actually had to start from scratch with them again. In other words, it's easy to to go RGB--->CMYK. You cannot go CMYK--->RGB.

[Blanka]

In other words, it's easy to to go RGB--->CMYK. You cannot go CMYK--->RGB.

It's true that RGB interpretation gets better and better at the printer side.
Following problem remains:
A printing process has a hexagon shape in the total gamut triangle, and most of the time within the RGB space as well, where RGB is a triangular shape slight smaller then the max gamut of the eye shape, but similar in form.
This means reds, greens and blues are always less saturated in print, where as aqua blues (cyan) and sunflower yellows always win in print and look worse in RGB.
So that makes me want to design in CMYK and convert to RGB. It is not that hard (the only thing difficult is gradients, but Photoshop helps after converting Freehand vectors to TIFF). I like the colours I get in a CMYK workflow for vector imaging much better then when I work in RGB. The colour balance in RGB is just not realistic for print.