digital image help

[blustocking]

Can anyone recommend some good sites for Photoshop questions/help/tutorials. Any books that were especially helpful for digital photography and/or Photoshop? Something that would have something basic about resolutions and re-sizing.

And one question I have, when I make something Duotone, why can't I save it as a JPEG? Is there a way to save it as anything but .PSD, .EPS, .RAW, or .PDF?

*sighs* I should go to bed early for once.

Comments

A few tidbits of information, and no, I don't know why K = black.

[neobitch.livejournal.com]

The very most important thing, IMHO, is to take the picture at as high a resolution / as large a size as you're able to, and work from it, but never overwrite it.

Web is 72dpi. Print work starts at 150dpi, I believe. I like to work at 300dpi if I'm going to end up printing it -- you can always shrink it down if need be, but you can never enlarge it if you've started too small / at too low a resolution.

GIF images are 8bit (ie, 256-colour) images. They are best suited for greyscale and images with large blocks of solid/identical colour. They have lossless compression -- ie, if you save a .gif at 128 colours, then reopen it and resave it, the image remains exactly the same.

JPG images are 24bit (ie, bazillion-colour) images. They are best suited for photographs and images with subtle/smooth colour changes. They have lossy compression -- ie, if you save a .jpg at 50% quality, then reopen and resave it again, your image gets progressively more dithered and nasty.

RGB (red-green-blue) images are for web. CMYK (cyan-magenta-yellow-black) images are for print.

If you're not switching your images to CMYK mode for a specific reason, I recommend leaving them in RGB. The print people will be able to convert them for you, and you don't have to worry about accidentally mangling some colour information.

Hope this helps.

Re: be sure to let the printer know you left it RGB

[neobitch.livejournal.com]

*facepalms* Ouch. :/

Yes, you're right, of course -- if the images are left in RGB, let the print people know that.

I come strictly from a web background, and only know enough about print work to know that it's a spooky art and science of its own. Therefore, rather than dabble with things and possibly mess it all up, I do all the work I know I can do, and then leave the rest for the print folks who /know/ what they're doing. :)

Re: A few tidbits of information, and no, I don't know why K = black.

[blustocking.livejournal.com]

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! :D

That explains so much. I wish I'd asked sooner.