TIL exporting at 72 DPI instead of 300 DPI cost me 4 hours of rework

I was prepping a piece for a print showcase last weekend and accidentally kept the web export settings. Didn't notice until the print shop called saying my file was tiny. Had to go back into my layers, rescale everything, and re-export. Whole process took me from 8pm to midnight because I had to tweak brush sizes and mask edges again. Anyone else accidentally send a low-res file and have to redo the whole thing?

3 comments

3 Comments

terry_lewis2122d ago

What software were you using? I've found that Photoshop keeps a hidden DPI flag in the file metadata that doesn't always show up in the preview window. Accidentally sent a 72 DPI logo to a client last month and they printed it on a billboard. Came out looking like pixel soup. Had to rebuild the whole vector from scratch because I couldn't just scale it up cleanly.

terry_wood5122d ago

Pop open the file properties next time before you send it off, that extra metadata check saves me a headache every few months. Most preview windows strip out the important stuff.

alicew685d ago

Oh man, that billboard story gives me flashbacks. I had this one time where I was sending off a batch of product photos to a catalog printer and I was in such a hurry I didn't even think to check the embedded color profile. Turns out the camera I was borrowing from a buddy had its RGB profile set to something weird from his studio lights, and when the printer tried to convert it to CMYK everything turned this sickly greenish brown. They didn't catch it until the proof came back and we had to resend all 47 images with the correct sRGB tag baked in. Now I always run everything through a little batch script that strips out all the junk metadata and forces a standard profile, because apparently half the programs out there just ignore what's in the preview window anyway. The vector rebuild from scratch must have been brutal though, I hate when you can't just scale something back cleanly.