NPA Art Specs (and Something for Everyone)

[Luke]

So to earn my keep these days, I'm a pixel-jockey. I spend my nights wrangling little pixels and making them run ragged circles.

Heeyah little doggies.

Specs for NPA Art:
All art should be Black and White--no gray in it whatsoever.
It should be scanned into Photoshop as a 1200dpi Bitmap tif.

What does this mean?
Open your image right now, go to Image>Mode>Bitmap.

If it is Image>Mode>Grayscale, that's wrong.
If it is Image>Mode>RGB, that's wrong.

Do it: Image>Mode>Bitmap.
It will reduce the size of the file greatly, and it will print cleaner than if it were grayscale

Saving the image as LZW compressed in the tif Save As options also helps and is an acceptable practice.


Now if you couldn't resist commissioning an image with gray in it--washes, gradients, shades of gray-- then a bitmap won't work for you. When you convert to bitmap, the image will lose a lot of detail. So we need to make it Grayscale.

I would prefer 600  dpi Grayscale tifs. Image>Mode>Grayscale.
If this is too big for your server to handle, i'll take 300 dpi Grayscale tifs, but only if you can't give me either of the above.

Image>Image Size>Resolution>300 dpi>check Resample.

Do not ever INCREASE the resolution of a file. You may only decrease it. If you increase it, I will be able to tell immediately and I will come to your house with the Agfa Pocket Pal and sit and make you read it until you understand my pain.

These are the exact same guidelines I used for Burning Wheel. At 240 pages, including art, BW was a smaller file than 75% of the full-color, 16-page stuff I work with at, um, work. Learning this trick just may help you get your game out there looking and feeling cleaner.

Please do not send me 50mb files. If your files are that big, then something is wrong. Follow the guidelines above to reduce them. If you're still having trouble--if it's more than 10mb--contact me directly.

[Michael S. Miller]

Please do not send me 50mb files. If your files are that big, then something is wrong. Follow the guidelines above to reduce them. If you're still having trouble--if it's more than 10mb--contact me directly.

Luke I think your max. file size of 10MB is a bit too small. If my math is correct, 4 inches by 4 inches is 16 sq. inches. Multiply that by 1200 dpi gives you 19200 pixels. Saving as B&W means there's only 1 bit per pixel, meaning the file size is 19200 bytes. Divide by 1024 gives file size of 18.75MB.

I realize my artist didn't do this, and I'll fix it this evening and sent it to you again.

BTW: stop having so much fun with colors, the Birthday Party's over!  8^)

[Ben Terry]

I think you forgot to divide the 19,200 bits by 8 to get the bytes.  1 bit (2 color) pics at that resolution should weigh in around 2.5 MB or so.

[talysman]

I think you forgot to divide the 19,200 bits by 8 to get the bytes.  1 bit (2 color) pics at that resolution should weigh in around 2.5 MB or so.

not to mention comrpession options.

[Luke]

Not to be all moderator-like, but quit posting tech-geek stuff in this thread.

I know what I'm talking about; my specs are reasonably correct.

If any of the authors or artists have further questions, feel free to post them here. I would be happy to address them.

[Michael S. Miller]

I think you forgot to divide the 19,200 bits by 8 to get the bytes.  1 bit (2 color) pics at that resolution should weigh in around 2.5 MB or so.

not to mention comrpession options.

The two of you, and Luke, of course, are absolutely correct! My pixel-fu is very rusty and out-of-date. My apologies for thread clutter. I will certainly link future artists to this thread.

[xiombarg]

Luke, what are the dimensions for a border/sidebar again? Your correcting yourself in the old thread confuses me.

I might have a lot of art for you, if it's a problem just cut some of it. ;-D

[Luke]

the border art can be an L shape. The upright should be no more than 10", the base no longer than 4". The entire piece should be 1.5-2" deep.

Or it can be a strip, 9" tall by 1.5-2" deep. 1.5" is preferred--seems to work nicer in the layout--but 2" is ok if you want to risk some funkiness in your piece.

-L

[Luke]

Ok, this was quoted from the other NPA art thread:

I had to increase the resolution, unfortunately, as I was previously working at 300dpi. Hope that's alright.

This was quoted from me in the this thread:

Do not ever INCREASE the resolution of a file. You may only decrease it. If you increase it, I will be able to tell immediately and I will come to your house with the Agfa Pocket Pal and sit and make you read it until you understand my pain.

As you can see, "rezzing up" as we say, is not okay. Don't do it. If you have file that is native 300 dpi, just send it as 300 dpi. Don't increase the resolution in photoshop. You're not actually increasing the resolution of the picture, you're just making it blurry and pixelated.

If 300 dpi's all I can, that's what I'll take. And it look's like i gotta make a house call...

;)
-L

[xiombarg]

See, part of the problem with me working directly with the artist is I don't understand pixel-monkey stuff enough to understand all of this. I know you said not to increase the resolution, but I wasn't sure what that MEANT in this context and if that's what my artist was actually doing...

[Juicetyger]

I don't understand what you're doing here.  Is this for a book or project or what?

[Jeph]

It's an anthology of 8 short RPGs that will (hopefully) debut at Origins. We're in the latter stages of art&layout, as you can see. The publisher is Luke Crane (abzu), the guy who wrote and puts out the Burning Wheel Fantasy Role-Playing Game, which I really ought to be buying, some time very soon.

--Jeff