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Magazine Images………
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I know this question has been asked a thousand times, and every so often some other edjit askes it again. When shooting images for a high class glossy magazine, what size do the images need to be ? I have been asked to do some work for a glossy, I haven’t accepted yet, so I am trying to get the low down before I step into the lions den so to speak. Anyone give me any pointers????
Thanks very much
Derek…….
Depends on the size of the magazine and the size of the image in the magazine! Magazine printing is generally done at a screen frequency of 133lpi or 150lpi. That equates to an image resolution of 300dpi. So if you want an image to fill an A4 magazine page (that’s roughly 8.5″ x 11″) your image size should ideally be 2550 x 3300 pixels, i.e., 8 megapixels (c.a. a 23.5MB file)
I have often wondered about this Thorsten.
From what you just said anything over a 20d is overkill so why do the top photographers buy a mega expensive 1ds mk11 ???
Thanks Thorsten, I usually do all my editing cropping and anything else at 300 dpi so I’m half way there at least. You were also right about the mag size. As far as i know it’s your standard A4 size glossy finished mag. Thanks very much for clearing that up, a world of info as usual. Thanks…….
Now thats a whole different can of worms there Tara1. I think I’ll leave this to Thorsten to explain, he’s a lot more articulate than myself……..
Briefly so far as I am aware, it’s to do with greater detail within the image. I know why it is, just kinda hard to get it over.
tara1 wrote:
I have often wondered about this Thorsten.
From what you just said anything over a 20d is overkill so why do the top photographers buy a mega expensive 1ds mk11 ???
The CPS (Canon Professional Services) website has an article about a photographer that used a 6.3 MP EOS 10D shooting in JPEG quality to produce huge posters between 7′ and 11′ tall.
So why do pro’s use an expensive camera such as the EOS 1Ds MkII or bigger? A lot of reasons really. Image size is but one of the factors. Reliability, focus speed, handling and other characteristics all come in to play. They might need the extra size to enable them to do post-capture cropping an so on. And often stock libraries will have a minimum image size (I think it’s 50MB).
Don’t tell me your ambition stops at a single page?
And not all magazines are the same size.Downsampling is always far more satisfying than upsampling anyway-
and not too many magazines are 2×3 or 3×2 format,
so some pixels will always be thrown away.j
Thorsten, had a quick look at the CPS site and read through the article you refered to. Tell you what, it made very interesting reading. Then I got way laid to other parts of the site, it’s a world of information and well worth a vist. Thanks for the link Thorsten………
lol….JB7…. I like your style there. Always look at the bigger picture. For this magazine i need to produce 4 wedding images that will be printed on one roughly A4 size page. There will be a small editorial about the subjects and thats it. Nothing really spectacular but I’m happy enough with that for starters……………
Why do pros use expensive cameras, because most pros deal with other clients too. Unless you work for a major magazine and are a staff photographer, mags don’t pay well anymore. In formula 1 for example, it was our sponsor clients and teams we worked for that was important, mags didnt’ really matter…extra income basically.
On another note, if you want to see how magazines should be produced, try and pick up a Japanese photography/sports mag. The printing is incredible, better than most coffee table books produced here.
It might also be worth checking how much “processing” they require you to do prior to submission.
2 particular mags I have had experience with where the complete opposite of each other. One wanted completely uncropped, untouched files. For the other one, I had to do some processing myself.Steven
StevenHanna wrote:
It might also be worth checking how much “processing” they require you to do prior to submission.
2 particular mags I have had experience with where the complete opposite of each other. One wanted completely uncropped, untouched files. For the other one, I had to do some processing myself.Steven
Excellent point. Might be worth pointing out too that in a lot of cases images should remain un-sharpened as different levels of sharpening will apply for different uses and once an image is sharpened it can never be undone. This is something that caused me grief in the past as did the conversion from RGB to CMYK!
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