WHEN A PUBLISHER ASKS FOR PHOTOS

by Pamela White

While requirements from various publishers will vary by their reproduction process and their mechanical setups, you will find three essential formats that you must understand to provide photographs to illustrate your stories.

Two of the requests will involve digital photography. As recently as 2000, the preponderance of photo illustrations were still taken by film cameras. With the boom in both digital photography and digital processing, that tide has turned.

Most digital photography requirements will focus on one major element: image resolution. For top-quality reproduction, final image resolution must be maintained at between 200 and 300 dots per inch, or dpi. Most newspapers and many magazines will use 200 dpi pictures; some of the glossier magazines that have high reproduction standards will call for 300 dots per inch. Anything less will not be acceptable.

To achieve these resolution standards, you will need a camera of at least 3.1 megapixels capability. Most good quality and above digital cameras on the market today will provide this resolution. But it is important to remember that high resolution has to start with the original shot and carry through all processing – so you must turn those 3.1 megapixel cameras up to their highest quality BEFORE you take your pictures. See your camera's guide for how to take your pictures at the highest resolution.

You will need, as well, a decent photo manipulation program. For most people, Adobe's Photoshop Elements or Micrografx's Picture Publisher provide simple, relatively intuitive instructions and drop-down menus that will allow you to do the minimal manipulation you will need to do. And both have adequate automatic correction functions – for color balance, sharpening, contrast and so forth – that you don't have to be an expert to get good pictures.

For high resolution pictures, you will need to find a minimum photo size, in inches or picas, that your publisher wants for publication. At high resolutions, size will sometimes push photo file sizes out of the range of many e-mail programs, so be ready to find an alternative way to transmit these photographs (an 8" x 10", 200 dpi picture will have a file size of more than 7 megabytes in JPEG format, and more than 12 megabytes in a TIFF format).

And, speaking of formats, your publisher will tell you (especially since you're going to ask) what file format is preferred: JPEG, which compresses files to make them up to 40 percent smaller; GIF, which uses a different, less efficient but more reliable compression system, or TIFF, which sends pretty close to a raw file. WARNING: if you use a compressed format, especially JPEG, and the publisher doesn't want that, the picture will be useless.

If you're sending pictures solely for web publication, everything gets easier. Because computer screens maximum of 72 dpi, web publications only need 72 dpi for their use. Because of that, if file size is a problem, you can reduce the resolution as needed, no matter what the photo size, as long as you don't go below 72 dpi. As a result, large picture files usually end up less than 1 megabyte, well within the range of virtually every e-mail limit.

If you find a publisher who wants photos from a film camera, only the most experienced of photographers will be able to illustrate their work. Low speed (ISO 64 or 100) 35 mm slide film has been the standard for many publishers, and others have required mid- to large-format negatives or slides of 2¼" x 2¼" or larger – and if you have cameras that use that film, you don't need to be reading this anyway.

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Pamela White is the publisher of Food Writing, an online newsletter for writers, and she is the teacher of Eat, Drink, and Make Money: All About Food Writing, an online 8-week course. More information is found on  www.food-writing.com  . She is the author of Fabjob's Guide to Becoming a Food Writer at http://www.FabJob.com/foodwriter.asp?affiliate=2464 

I have searched long and ardently for these free art resources.  They are not a copy of someone else's information that came from someone else's copy of someone else's copy.  Each site is listed here because I like it, and I use it.  Any backlinks to this page are purely coincidental; I did not ask for them.  You are invited to use my list too.  Bookmark this page and tell your friends about it if you get a chance.  Click HERE to see how I use some of the artwork I got from these sources.  Thank you.

Mark Twain always said that the right word and one that was almost right was like the difference between lightning and lightning bug.  I'm here to tell you that for the writer a good picture can get your story accepted ten times as fast.

Morgue File contains free high resolution digital stock photography for either corporate or public use.  What is here is good.  The site is easy to use if you already know what you want.

Image*After  The raw base for your creativity.  This is fairly well organized and quite well populated.

The Incredible Art Department 

The Clipart Point is home to 230,000 animated clipart, icons, backgrounds, bars, interfaces, and other cool, free graphics.  The site makes you jump through two hoops to get the product, and most of it is,,, not good.  The hoops are pages full of offers not worth taking up.  But FREE is free, right?  

Browse through the categories of our huge gallery containing over 100.000 quality stock photos by more than 9.000 users! Need a wallpaper for your desktop? Need a pic for your commercial website design? Looking for inspiration? Have a look around.

Share your photos with fellow designers! SXC is a friendly community of photography addicts who generously offer their works to the public free of charge. If you have some nice photos that you'd like to share with others, join us!

Alaska Stock Search is a terrific resource for any picture Alaska in scope.  You do have to sign up, and in, but that is a very small price to pay for all the wonderful pictures.

Noah's Ark, for outdoor pictures you can use, but must acknowledge where they come from.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration  

U.S. Fish and Wildlife 

Pixel Perfect offers free high resolution images, textures, backgrounds, illustrations, digital art and stock photos for use in both personal and commercial design projects. Also browse photography news, articles, reviews, tutorials, and 100's of quality links to photography and design resources. We also have a photography and design forum.

Open Photo.  *  Picture Station  *  Big foto  *  Free Stock Photos  *  Pictures from Switzerland  *  Galleria El Dorado  *  Free Photos Bank  *  Now, how about some FREE software to make the best possible use from all your pictures?

There are hundreds of other pictures on Tale Wins that you can use in a similar fashion.  If you see one you like, let me know.

Similar deals can be cut occasionally for artwork I produce.