Bitmapped Tiffs in Illustrator

[exxxlonghair]

Yep, checked the Illustrator files in Preview and Acrobat as suggested and they look smooth. Thanks for the tips.

[MEANS]

also did you place the tiff or embed it?

[27designco]

Try all the above options first but if you're still not satisfied with the preview you can try embedding the tiff in Illustrator, although with a 1200dpi tiff you're going to end up with a pretty clunky ai file.

[the hipoisie]

And 300 dpi is all it takes to convert an image in Illustrator to have no jaggies.

No, I think you're talking about something different, a 300 dpi bitmap will look bad.

[exxxlonghair]

The .tiffs were embedded. The file is not super huge but it does take awhile to open and save since there are like 8 embedded tiffs in the file.

[B-DROID]

No, I think you're talking about something different, a 300 dpi bitmap will look bad.

300dpi bitmap will look just fine.

[the hipoisie]

Fine if you like jaggies.

[loco]

Quick question. why would anybody scan at such a high resolution?

I do alot at 300 rez layered files (photoshop) that are at 1/4 scale then when I'm done with the file I flaten the layers and print out anywhere form 24"x 400" - 37" 500" or so and they print super nice.

-loco

[RichieGoodtimes]

So...like when you've got these 1200dpi bitmap tiffs...what do you output them to? What's you're output device's resolution? If it's less than 1200, then what's the fucking point?

[exxxlonghair]

I know 1200 dpi is total overkill. When i used to run this sign company in San Francisco we printed huge banners on a 6 color solvent printer and they looked great at 150 to 300 dpi full size.
In this case I am outputting lineart films on an EpsonStylus Pro 4880. I only care about the rez on the lineart, not the fills.
In screen printing I always used to hand draw all my stencils direct to frosted mylar and do the seps the same or with Ruby. Now I draw my lineart on Bristol and scan it in. I am usually drawing it a bit smaller than what it will be printed. A friend in the comic book industry pointed me to this guide for scanning in black lineart. I usually do this then bring it into illustrator so I can really control my traps. Who knows how old this guide is though.

(From Jordan Cranes Repo Guide)
LINEART
There are two ways to do this, both will yield good results, but the second one gives better results if you’re a fuck- ing snob like me. Both these methods use PhotoShop for scanning and conversion.

The first way to scan in your drawings are as 800dpi ( dpi means Dots Per Inch) bitmaps. Most printers will tell you that 600dpi is okay, but they’re wrong. 800dpi is the minimum acceptable resolution. So scan it in, and save it out as at TIFF. When you’re naming your files, chose a convention that will be fairly obvious to the printer, such a s p01.tiff, p02.tiff and so on. And that’s it.

The second method is a bit more involved, but gives you better (let me assure you that nobody except other car- toonists will actually notice) image reproduction. Scan your art in as a 600dpi grayscale file. Convert it to a 1200dpi greyscale file. Now, you’re gonna use the Threshold commad. What this does is it turns all the pixels in your image either black or white (as a bitmap does) and it lets you play with the point at which the pixels go black.. so for example - normal 50% conversion to bitmap, any pixels that are 49% black will be white.. with the Threshold you can adjust it so that they are black.. Play with it, you’ll understand, it’s pretty obvious. Simply go to Image>Adjust>Threshold and mess with that until you get the most exact reproduction of your lineart as possible. Then convert it to a 1200dpi bitmap file, and save it out as a TIFF.
This gives the best reproduction of your image that I’m aware of. It even does drybrush perfectly..

By the way. A note on Bitmaps. The reason you convert all your images to bitmaps prior to sending them is that bitmaps are the most basic form of an image. The pixels are either black or white, on or off. This means that you
have exact control over whether or not each pixel gets printed. Which is what you want. Control. The more you specify, the less the printer can fuck up.

Now, if your image contains grey tones like thin washes of ink or watercolor – such as a Ben Katchor drawing might – then you’d scan it in at 300dpi greyscale, and save it out as a greyscale TIFF. Easy. The reason you only scan it at 300dpi is because when they print it, they’ll apply what’s called a halftone pattern to it, which essentially converts your smooth, continuous tone photo to a bunch of little dots. Take a magnifying glass to any printed greyscale art, and you’ll see the leeetle dots. To make that halftone pattern, 300dpi is the maximum resolution they need. If you want an idea of what 300dpi looks like, open any magazine and look at any photo therein. That photo is 300dpi. So there you go.