When sending art to a print shop you want it to be the sharpest and clearest image possible. How you email the photo will actually determine what it looks like when printed.
There are two ways to send art in an email – by attaching the file or by dropping the image into the email body. Attaching the file is the correct way to send art to a print shop. By attaching the file it keeps the art in its original format and resolution. By dropping an image the email software will reconfigure it to its own specifications and change the format, resolution and even change the color profile from CMYK to RGB.
You can experiment with a photo to see the difference. Open a photo in Photoshop and look at the image size. I opened a photo and saw the resolution was 1350 px wide by 1545 px high. It looked similar to the quality in this photo:
I then emailed the photo the two different ways – dropping and attaching. Both photos looked fine when I sent them, but when I opened them in Photoshop the one I dropped into the email looked like this:
When I checked the resolution of the photo had dropped to 720 pixels wide to 824 pixels high. That’s about half the resolution I started with. Imagine what this would look like if blown to a large format for posters or calendars!
Of course Erik, our Director of Operations at Accent Printing, would never print an image of such low quality. He’d contact the client immediately and have them resend it in the higher resolution. But knowing the right way to send art to print shops can help you save time and money!
