Artwork Resolution : Screen vs. Print

This has come up a couple of times in the last few weeks, so I figured I'd better post about it. If you hire Sinister Visions to create a website for you, the artwork/graphics will be created specifically for the website, for screen usage. They WILL NOT be suitable for print usage, period*.

In other words, if you only hire SVi to do a website, don't think you're getting flyer art out of the deal unless you SPECIFY that AHEAD OF TIME, and it's built into your fee. SVi is happy to create your marketing artwork at high resolution for you to use however you need, but you gotta pay for it.

If you come back after the website has been launched and ask for the artwork to use on a poster or something, please expect to pay an artwork re-creation fee, as the work will have to be remade from scratch at a print-quality resolution.

Remember, there is no magic wand, here. Photoshop is not powered by fairy dust. The graphics SVi creates are pains-takingly built, layer by layer, and can't just be "blown up" 300% without serious image degradation.

*As a frame of reference, your screen uses 72 dots (pixels) per square inch to show you an image. Something printed will be a minimum of 300 dots per inch. If you've ever seen something printed from a website, you've noticed how blurry, blotchy and blocky it looks - that's because it's screen-resolution, not meant for print. If you still don't understand the concept, take a magnifying glass and look at a magazine cover - you'll see the dots; printing screen-rez images lets people "see the dots".