Educating customers about photo quality

[Frank Corker]

Its definitely an uphill battle. I'm with Andrea I ask them to send me the original directly from the camera, not adjusted but they can send me a cropped version that they were thinking about. I just hate it when they send the photo saying my nephew fixed it in photoshop and it's basically a really bad smudged piece of junk.

[Liesl Dexheimer]

Ugh don't even get me started on that topic, lol! As far as photo engraving is concerned...we purchased Photograv 1 yr ago & I have gotten one job out of it so far and I have one pending. I was told by a professional in our industry that if the photo requires extensive editing to charge roughly $100 per hr to edit it. I don't know who around here will be willing to pay that price (maybe in a large city but not in a rural town).

As far as logos are concerned, it definitely is hard to get customers to understand that you can't just pull a logo off of a website. I don't know how many times I have had to go tell them it's low resolution & they look at you like you are making this rule up. I just had a customer do this exact same thing a month ago, they took an image and saved it as a fake eps. Ugh!

Just a tip for you engravers out there (you may already know this or have figured it out), sometimes if the company is large enough, check their website for press releases or a brand identity guideline that you can download. For that particular customer I was talking about previously, I was able to find a press release in pdf format with their logo which was in vector format. I was so happy I was able to use that instead of a fuzzy jpg.

[Doug Griffith]

I'm also amazed at how I can look at printed material by a company or even their website and see that their logo was created as a vector. When asked for it, they only have a bitmap or a printed letterhead or even a business card. Nobody knows where the original is. When this happens, I start asking questions like "who designed it", "who prints for them", "who built their website". I get email addresses and shoot off a request with technical specs from someone who knows what they are asking for, which is me. This has panned out quite a few times.

[Niklas Bjornestal]

I'm also amazed at how I can look at printed material by a company or even their website and see that their logo was created as a vector. When asked for it, they only have a bitmap or a printed letterhead or even a business card. Nobody knows where the original is. When this happens, I start asking questions like "who designed it", "who prints for them", "who built their website". I get email addresses and shoot off a request with technical specs from someone who knows what they are asking for, which is me. This has panned out quite a few times.

One reason for this (for smaller companies at least) is that many designers charge alot more to hand out the vector files.

[Doug Griffith]

One reason for this (for smaller companies at least) is that many designers charge alot more to hand out the vector files.

I know. I've done many logos for hire and if I was ever in the need to outsource and was told I had to pay more for the vector, I'd tell the designer to take a hike. A bitmap is a one trick pony.

[Bill Cunningham]

'Then' there's the customer that tells you "sure, no problem, I know exactly what you need, and I can send you a .cdr file" When you open the file, there's the same crappy web.jpg embedded in a .cdr file ..
Ya just can't win sometimes...

[Stephen Beckham]

MY pet peeve being around the Military is their self-inflated abilities to make ANYTHING in Microsoft Power Point and want me to reproduce it just like it comes in.

Not only does it chop down the photo quality, the Power-Point-Rangers usually got a one-hour class in some leadership training course and can tell me anything I want to know about Microsoft


I always request a copy of all of the original art imported to Power Point along with their version. What does that mean to them, "I'll just export the picture from the Power Point slide for you" like I couldn't do that... Geesh...

[Bill Cunningham]

That must be a universal 'military thing' Most of the stuff they send me, is a power point thingy.. Once in a while I'll also get a crappy .jpg that wins out over the powerpoint thingy..ha.. Or some piece of crud embedded in a .doc file, which might even be worse..

[Bruce Clumpner]

Sometimes I kick-back a PDF as proof for the customer to sign off. If you create it at full size, and have them print it out to sign, the get to see how good or bad the photo they provided reproduces.

[Julie Nickerson]

I do sublimation printing. I have customers who will email low res photos and want the photo full size on a license plate. I explain to them that it's impossible to put a small image on a 6x9 plate and it being a good quality image. Like others have said, if it looks fine on their monitor they think it will look fine in print.
This past Christmas I had one lady get her daughter to email an image to me for a full size license plate. It was 96 dpi. I emailed the daughter back and said that I wanted the image to be at least 240 dpi. I also explained that the image was in portrait and it should have been taken in landscape and will not cover the full plate without it being totally distorted. I recommended putting a frame around the photo and add kids names etc. Nope, wanted the full image on the plate. I told them couldn't be done with the image size that was provided. So, the daughter drops off the image printed at 8 x 10 on a plain sheet of paper, which looked horrible, and wanted me to scan it and change the resolution to what I needed. Again, explained that I couldn't do it. I ended up turning down the job. They went down the street to a printing place that does vinyl and has the plate done there. The image is small and has a frame around it as well as the kids name. The customer is a friend of my mother's who in turn got upset with me because I refused to do the plate.
I had a couple of other people who emailed photos from a paid photographer for license plates. The images weren't the greatest, color cast issues. I offered to fix up the photos but would have to charge for that. Was told nope, print the photos onto the plates as is. So I did. They weren't too happy with the quality on the plate but they took them just the same.
I get so discouraged with customers that I'm thinking on not doing sublimation printing at all.
I'm sorry that this is so long. I channel Edith Bunker

[Dan Hintz]

"Oh Archie..."

Customers often convince themselves they know what they're talking about (guilty of it myself from time to time), even when they don't. Not much you can do but nudge them in the proper direction and hope they move. I feel for you...

[Bill Cunningham]

If 'YOU' think that it's going to look like crap when done, refuse to do it... Remember, when it does come out looking like crap, someone is sure to ask them who did it, and they will just take it for granted that the cruddy work is the fault of the person who made the piece, and that's YOU.. After all, it looked great on the computer screen when they sent it to you!

[Julie Nickerson]

"Oh Archie..."

Customers often convince themselves they know what they're talking about (guilty of it myself from time to time), even when they don't. Not much you can do but nudge them in the proper direction and hope they move. I feel for you...

Yeah I'm guilty of this to. Some understand, some don't.

[John Daugherty]

Not to hijack this thread, but since you all are here I'll ask. I've got a picture I'd like to get engraved for my wife on marble of the kids. It's in a tiff format and the size is 2288 x 2915 pix 7.627 x 9.717 (I guess that's 8 x 10) 300 pix per inch. The image is black and white. Would this size work?

[Darren Null]

If you want an 8x10 or smaller, then yes. Assuming the image is sharp, it could maybe go to double that size without too much of a quality hit on a laser. You can get away with a bit more on lasers because you're dropping all the colour information and dithering the image so you can sort of spread the pixels out a bit. That size image is big enough to work with; assuming a good quality photo with the subject covering a significant proportion of the image.

As a general rule of thumb, 1:1 size at 300 dpi is enough to get a result from either print or laser.