I just got my latest album back from WHCC--the first one designed with Ben Harrison's templates (which I LOVE!!!) and it looked all "pixelated". I realized that somehow the files I uploaded were sent lo-resolution. I have no idea how I saved them lo-res. I thought I exported them and made them the max size by checking the maximum that I could....and I just exported them again and its showing up lo-res again.

I know basically nothing about indesign except for what I learned on ben's videos. I did notice though that his videos show a box that lets him choose 300 dpi and my CS2 does not let me do that--it only lets me select max min etc....maybe that is the problem, but how do i fix it?

Hopefully there is some kind of quick fix--I have to reorder this album and eat the cost of the other one--and the yucky thing is the album is so lo-res that it can't even be a sample album. YUCK!!

As long as your dimensions were right for the size book you ordered and you exported at at least 150ppi, then they should be fine. I always export as Maximum quality at 300ppi and never have any problem when I use BH templates or create my own spreads. Good luck girl!

In the email that I got from Ben when I ordered his templates, it actually addresses this issue. Here's what it said:



There should be a video called "JPEGexportBUG(WATCHME)" that walks you through how to save it as a .eps

Hope that helps! =)

Yes,
I think I heard the CS2 version jpeg export is not high rez. It is a low rez file. You have to do what Ben said. (But then again, I may not know what I am talking about since I am still new at it too!)

Tell us more too. I was a graphic designer for years and am often disturbed by loose terms like "low rez" "high rez" and dpi. Lets start talking pixels, inches and picas vs those loose terms. What is your document size you were designing with? Were you just opening the templates or did you change the size of the board as you were working? Interpolation is also a common problem for pixilation. interpolation means you upsize an image. This is a huge design no no. I often see photographers take a 6 megapixel image - example size 3072 x 2048 pixels and stretch it out to 4000 x 6000 pixels - which in dpi terms is 13 x20 inches at 300 dpi. So of course in that example it's going to look pixelated. So tell us - what pixel size you are designing with - and what size book you are designing - what size your ID board was -and what was the pixel size of the .jpgs you originally sent to WHCC.

Pixelization is also a loose term - what did it exactly do? Was it aliasing? Which is general pixilization where you see the step pattern. Bluring? \ - or did it have edge halos? If your not sure what these are do a few google searches to learn.

You can't use the JPG export in CS2 for print files, it's that simple. They didn't add that feature until CS3. The CS2 JPG export is meant for screen or web viewing only.

My method (and the one I think is most common) is to save the document to a PDF and open the PDF in photoshop and save the JPGs from there. I have an action that saves the pages, with one click it does the correct amount of sharpening for print and saves and closes. I prefer to click for each page so I have one last chance to review the high resolution files.

Hope that helps!

Exactly what I do...minus the sharpening. I've already sharpened the images before I export out of InDesign.

Bill, I'm wondering if your option is better since you're sharpening after the images have been resized. Can I ask what settings you have found that work?

Thanks everyone for helping out kerri with the pixellation issues .. and sorry it took me so long to find this post ... everybody had great things and were correct regarding this issue.

I can add one thing ... for sandra and others wondering about pixel dimensions as opposed to dpi, etc ... the image quality issue lies not in the pixel dimensions of the output page (the page elements, etc are fine) the issue is with Indesign subsampling the image down to 72 dpi while also changing the pixel dimensions of the image (to fit in the frame you drop it in). Like Bill Stated, they didn't add a high quality JPEG export until CS3 so the image resampling in CS2 is only up to the standards of creating a web version.

hope that helps!

ben

So is it okay now to use the JPEG export in CS3, how about CS4, anybody built an album on CS4 yet.

I just got CS4 and next week i'll start using Ben's templates to build this album in CS4. I'll probably need to watch your videos again since i jumped from CS2 to CS4.

Your CS3 tutorials will be so much easier to follow now that i'm working in CS4.