Salon PR Tip – Understand Editorial Media Requirements

Posted by Alexander Irving under Consumer Editorial, Editorial Insights, General, How-To, News Releases, Photography, The PR Mindset, Tips & Tricks

Online and Print are Two Different Beasts

What looks fine on a computer screen is often totally unusable for print publication.  We recommend you invest the time to learn about DPI (dots per inch)  vs. PPI (Pixel density), screen size (pixels) vs. print size (inches), image file types (strengths and shortcomings), etc.

It’s annoying (and time-wasting) when an editor asks for a print-ready image and you send a 72 DPI, web-ready image with JPEG artifacts and stretching (ugh).  What they really could use is a high-resolution TIFF, PNG or low-compression JPG.  If you don’t understand what I am talking about, you need to, the same as you need to understand the chemistry of hair color.

Either take a class, or spend time reading up on the topic.  Here are several web resources that may help you with what you ‘need’ to know.

• All About Digital Photos – Two sections are a must read here – ‘Changing DPI’ and ‘The Myth of DPI’.
• DPI and PPI Explained
• Image File Types I
• Image File Types II

 But I Don’t Have Photoshop!

Two excellent, easy to use, and free programs for image handling we can recommend are Xnview and Irfanview.  Personally, we use Xnview.

Download your choice and keep it handy.

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2 responses to “Salon PR Tip – Understand Editorial Media Requirements”

1. mary greenberg says:

   November 30, 2012 at 7:57 pm

   You are so right about that! As an editor, I am constantly having to explain to publicists that their product shots are good for the web, but not for print. Every publicist should have Photoshop on their desktop to check images before they send them out.

   • Alexander Irving says:

     December 1, 2012 at 8:13 am

     Photoshop is expensive. Even Photoshop Elements is pricey. I use Xnview. It is free (yay), and an excellent photo manipulator.

     As it says in one of the links I included, “The trick when changing the DPI is to do it without resizing (resampling) your image in the process. You want to change the DPI while retaining the original pixel dimensions (the real digital resolution) of the photo. I’ll provide three examples, one using Adobe Photoshop (Windows & mac) and the other two using the free programs XnView (Windows, Linux & mac) and Irfanview (Windows).

     Thanks for your comment. Very meaningful coming from an editor.