Why can’t you print images from a website?

Does your business card text look fuzzy? Is a photo’s color not quite right? Is there a white box around an image? You aren’t alone. You’ve probably fallen prey to some very common printing problems. You’ve used web images as print images, and that very often is a no-go.

All too common questions we hear at our shop are, ‘Why can’t I print images from my website?’ or ‘Why can’t you use the logo from my website?’ Many times when we are designing printed materials for small businesses we’ll be asked to grab an image or logo from a customer’s existing website. It seems simple enough, but in fact it is a major cause of printing problems and we generally won’t do it.

This isn’t because we don’t like your website, or that we don’t like the picture you chose. It is actually because the world of website images and the world of print images are very different. Websites and print follow different standards and images need to be set up specifically for their intended purpose. Our rule of thumb is ‘Don’t cross the beams’ (with apologies to Ghostbusters fans).

So, why exactly can’t you print images from the web ? Let’s look at a few points.

Maintaining image quality

Have you ever seen an image in a local paper or a school newsletter that looked pixellated? Perhaps someone’s face was simplified to an abstract display of squares? This is a prime example of why you can’t use web images in a print project.

Web images are designed with pixels in mind. On a basic level they are too small for print. These images are made with a level of pixel detail that looks right to our eye on a screen. Usually that is 72 pixels per inch (PPI). But when printing we don’t use pixels, we use something called rosettes (which is a fancy word for dots). And when we print images we print them at 300 dots per inch (DPI).

In order to make a web image look even somewhat decent in print we would have to shrink it down considerably. So an image that might seem to be about 4 inches by 4 inches on a screen would get reduced to the size of a 1 inch by 1 inch postage stamp in a print project. Not good.

You might think that you could just change the resolution of an existing image. Open up that web image in Photoshop and change it around. Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way. You can’t add pixels to an image, so making a resolution change would just lead to bigger pixels (like our newsletter picture example) or fill in space between existing pixels which would lead to a blurry image. In other words garbage in, garbage out.

The correct step is to start with an original image at the highest resolution you can get your hands on. Then take that image and set it up for its intended purpose. A dot-rich image for high quality printing, and a separate lightweight image for the web.

Fuzz on your business card?

Another problem with web images used for print are the fuzzy ‘spiderwebs’ that become visible around text or fine detail in a graphic. It’s important to remember that web images are compressed and made as small as possible so that a website can load quickly across many platforms. In short they are designed for speed, not quality.

With print images, we not only want quality images, we need it.

On certain occasions we’ll get a project in which the designer has hastily added a logo or graphic pulled right from the web. Almost invariably the result looks like our example image above. Covered in dust, or as we say ‘spiderwebs.’

Again, the cure for such issues is to have the correct file for the job. It is especially important with graphics like logos or charts to have a crisp file that is designed for print. This means a vector graphic file such as a .svg file or .ai (Adobe Illustrator) file, or a very high quality image file.

And everything else

Unfortunately, these aren’t the only problems that can occur when you cross the web and print beams. We’ve seen color changes, strange lines or boxes showing up, and many other issues. The bottom line is once again to design with your end in mind.

If you are a small business owner and having something designed for you, it is vital that you ask the designer to provide both web and print versions of everything they are doing for you. Get it on a CD or DVD and keep it accessible.  Maintain original images in the best possible resolutions, and have your logos organized by size and format. The larger and less-touched your original file is, the easier it will be for a new designer to manipulate and get into a new format.

In the future, when you want or need to make changes, print something new, or have some new web-based page or service created you will have everything on hand.

Of course there are always changes happening in the world of print as well as the web. We would be happy to help you get the best possible images for both your print projects and any other projects you might have. Feel free to stop by or give us a call to see what we could do for you.

cutpasteandprint Printing, graphic design, binding, and promotional product specialists in Huntingdon Valley, PA. We proudly serve the Bucks and Montgomery County areas with superior quality, great customer service, and a commitment to getting you and your the best possible printed materials. Our services include: Digital Printing, Offset Printing, Graphic Design, Promotional Items, Bindery, and Copying.