While chatting with my current round robin group, I discovered that some of the players were having trouble capturing images from the Internet and printing them for their collage work. They said the images looked great on screen, but not so great when printed, but they weren’t sure how to fix the problem. I promised them a quick lesson in how to do that more effectively, so here it is:

First, it helps to know that not all images are created equal. All digital images are created from pixels, which are tiny boxes of color. The number of pixels per inch is usually referred to as the image’s resolution, or its dpi, which stands for dots per inch.

In a web image, the resolution is usually 72dpi, which is pretty low—but that’s OK, because most monitors only display this many dots per inch, so on screen, the image looks clear.

Now, when it comes to print imagery, you need more dots of ink per inch to get a clear image. I generally use 150dpi as a minimum for my black and white laser printer, and 300dpi as the minimum for my low-end inkjet printer. 300dpi is also used by many magazines and book publishers as the resolution for their printed images. Some digital artists raise the dpi of their imagery even higher to get crisp, clean prints. However, the more dots per inch, the larger the file it takes to hold them. For most purposes, unless you are doing really fine digital prints, 300dpi is large enough to get a decent image.

So, how do you find an image online that will also print well? First, look at the image size. I generally do this by right clicking on the image and choosing Properties. This tells me the how high and wide the image is in pixels. Try it with the image at left, and you’ll see the image is 159 pixels high by 200 pixels wide. It looks fine on screen, but it will make a lousy print. Try it—save this image to your hard drive, open it in your graphics software, and print it. Trust me, it’s not good—it’s very grainy.

Now try looking at the properties of this image, and you’ll see that it’s 318 pixels high by 400 pixels wide:

It’s pretty large. That’s great, but you probably don’t need an image this large, and it’s also still only 72dpi. Now’s the time to do a little manipulation with some graphics software to turn a big low resolution image into a smaller, higher resolution one.

Save this larger image, and open it in your graphics software. Since there are dozens of different programs available, and the majority of you won’t have the one I’m using, I’ll just describe this technique in the words most software will use, and you can use your Help file to find out exactly which buttons will get you where you want to go.

You want to find a function that lets you change the size of your image, and also change its resolution. If these functions can be manipulated all in one screen, great. If not, start with the resolution change, and then do the resizing. Doing it in reverse will make much ugliness!

So, you’re going to increase the resolution of your image from the current 72 to 150. Your image may appear to get larger and fuzzier on screen—don’t panic. When you’ve converted your image’s resolution, you’ll have an image that’s 663 high X 833 wide.

Now, you’re going to reduce the size of your image by 50%, from 663 X 883 pixels to 332 X 417 pixels. Do this by changing the size of the image, not by changing the resolution. I almost always knock the image down to half its size or just slightly larger when using this technique, which seems to bring it to an acceptable quality.

Now your image is the same size as the first one we viewed, but the resolution is much better. Try printing it—but you must print at the image’s size, and not use any functions that cause your printer to make the image the size of your page. You should end up with something that’s not too horrible.

Now, try tweaking your original 318 X 400 image to 300dpi, and then knocking the size down by half. Remember, if your software requires you to do this in two steps, always raise the resolution first, and then reduce the image size. Now try printing this one, and see what you get. Is it clearer than the others? I hope so! Sometimes forcing a low res image this high can result in some quality issues that have to be fixed with other tools.

OK, one more image to play with. Check the properties on this one:

You’ll find that it’s 636 x 800. That’s a nice sized image to work with. Do the resolution conversion to 150dpi, and then knock the image size down by half. You should end up with a good, usable image that’s not horribly grainy. Bumping this original up to 300 and knocking the size down by half should produce some nice results in terms of print quality.

Now you know what it takes to convert those web images—bottom line, the bigger the original image, the more pixels you have to work with, and the better your results will probably be. Other things that will help: be sure to choose an image with good color quality, that seems to be clear and crisp, and in focus. Also, be sure your printer is set to print photos at high resolution—all this work won’t do you a bit of good if your printer is converting your image back to something of poor quality!

General disclaimers for this article:

Results will vary based on experience and software. Contrary to popular opinion, digital artwork takes just as much practice, skill, and creativity as any other type of art. Don’t give up if your first image isn’t perfection.

I do my digital image manipulation in Adobe PhotoShop. It’s a professional grade program that costs $600-$700 to purchase, and about $200 every couple of years to upgrade. Like all art supplies, you get what you pay for when it comes to software, so if you’re using some piece of junk that came bundled with your computer, or is designed to make cards, cut it out—you’re using the digital equivalent of off-brand crayons to do a job that requires Lumieres. A reasonably priced alternative to PhotoShop is Paint Shop Pro by Jasc, which generally retails for under $100.

Please do not email me for individual lessons in this technique. If you’re really interested in learning how to manipulate images well, consider paying for an online class that will cover this in depth. Last time I checked, Virtual University was offering classes in all sorts of Paint Shop Pro techniques.

Last, but not least, this article in no way condones the practice of grabbing images from people’s web sites and using them for collage. If you’re downloading imagery, please be aware of their copyright status. There’s plenty of copyright-free stock art available in the world for personal use without resorting to looting web sites. Respect original photographs, graphics, and the artists who create them by not using them without permission.