best resolution and format to print hand-drawn "logo"

[maryc23857752]

I am trying to take a hand-drawn image (logo) and submit it for printing on paper cups and stone coasters. I have access to many of the programs in the Creative Cloud, but am not sure which I should use.  The image is currently in .PNG format and also in a .PDF; the current resolution is 72 ppi. The image was drawn with black ink on white paper. The lettering is hand drawn - not a font.

Any ideas?

Thank you!
 - Mary

[Nancy OShea · Accepted solution]

72ppi is not sufficient. You need much higher quality for printed artwork.

Re-create or re-trace logo in Illustrator as a vector graphic image.

[Moderator moved from Using the Community (forums) to Illustrator.

[Monika Gause]

The ppi value alone is not really meaningful. How many pixels are there?

For a logo this is far too detailed. You mioght need to live with loss of detail when this is scaled down. It might even get blurry.

[Nancy OShea]

I'm certain your print professional has required specifications for color, height, width and resolution of your final artwork. I highly recommend you obtain that first.  Don't leave this to guesswork.

[Jumpenjax]

Because I do not have all the details, this is what you can try. You can try to open the png file and or pdf in photoshop and increase the ppi and reduce the imagesize. But it might not be good enough quality still, it is very detailed. What is required for your order?

[Conrad_C]

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@maryc23857752 wrote:

I am trying to take a hand-drawn image (logo) and submit it for printing on paper cups and stone coasters...the current resolution is 72 ppi.

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It is 72 ppi only at its current physical size in inches. Whether that is enough depends on how much you would resize it to print on the cups and coasters. Looking at your attachment in Photoshop, the actual art area is 476 x 393 pixels. At 72 ppi, 476 pixels is 6.6 inches wide, which seems too big to print on a cup or coaster…that means 72 ppi does not represent the final printing size. We can work out the true final effective resolution by dividing one of the dimensions by the print size or resolution you want. Let’s try that with the long dimension, 476 pixels.

If your printing service requires 300 ppi, 476 pixels / 300 ppi = about 1.6 inches.

If your printing service requires 150 ppi, 476 pixels / 150 ppi = about 3.2 inches. 150 ppi might look a little coarse.

Or you can do this based on the width you want:

If you want it to be 2 inches wide, 476 pixels / 2 inches = 238 ppi. Would that meet the requirements of the printing service?

If the attached artwork needs to be a physical size in inches that will not work out to the resolution that the printing service requires, then the original hand artwork needs to be re-scanned to a file with larger pixel dimensions. For example, if you need the coaster art to be two inches wide at 300 ppi, then 2 inches x 300 ppi = 600 pixels wide. So you would want the image to be at least 600 pixels wide in this example.