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Bad quality images after export

Community Beginner ,
Mar 05, 2021 Mar 05, 2021

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I'm new to InDesign, I spent all day learning the basics. But when it came to attempting to make a publication, I exported some images onto the document and they came out really bad quality. Is this because I got them from google images? or is there something I'm missing?

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How to , Import and export , Performance

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Community Expert , Mar 06, 2021 Mar 06, 2021

I wrote an article on it here

https://creativepro.com/high-res-image-look-low-res/

 

And google images are protected by copyright - you're better off getting stock images. 

There's a few free stock sites

https://stock.adobe.com/ie/free

https://www.pexels.com/

https://unsplash.com/

https://pixabay.com/

 

Check the image licenses before you use them. 

 

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Community Expert ,
Mar 05, 2021 Mar 05, 2021

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images taken from Internet sources are generally too low-res for print. In addition, most of them will be covered by a copyright that would disallow you using them for your own publication. 

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Guide ,
Mar 05, 2021 Mar 05, 2021

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I think when you say "export," you really mean "import." When you bring an image onto the page, some programs call that importing, but InDesign calles it "placing." If you are using a copy of InDesign with a non-English interface, it might be called something different, but it's in the File menu.

 

What you see on the page isn't necessarily what you get, though. When a high-resolution image is viewed on the screen, it takes some time for the computer to render the digital info into pixels, and if you zoom or move around on the screen, it has to redraw those pixels again. This can take time, so InDesign defaults to showing you a lower-resolution image that is good enough for most placement issues. When you output the page to a printer or PDF, the low-resolution preview image is replaced by the actual image info, which is usually better. If you want to see the full-resolution image, you can go to View>Display Performance and choose High Quality Display, but your system will be a little slower. You can also show all of the images as grey blobs if you choose Fast Display, which you might need if you had many high-resolution images on a page, and you just need to edit the type.

 

The actual resolution of the image is a combination of the image's resolution (if it's a pixel-based format), plus the scaling. If a 300ppi photo is scaled up to 200%, it's resolution will be half, or 150ppi. Reduce it to 50% and it will be 600ppi. You can see the actual and effective ppi in the Links window. Vector images don't have a ppi, so you can scale them without changing the resolution.

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Community Beginner ,
Mar 06, 2021 Mar 06, 2021

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Thankyou. Would the quality of the image display be any different if my document preset was web? The publication I'm doing is for uni and with remote learning, I have no intention of printing it.

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Explorer ,
Mar 05, 2021 Mar 05, 2021

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What resolution are the images. You must have 300 dpi for print.

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Guide ,
Mar 05, 2021 Mar 05, 2021

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Well, that's generally a good benchmark, but it all depends on what you're printing. A photo on newsprint could work at much lower resolution, and if it's for a billboard that will be viewed from across a street, it could be lower still.

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Community Beginner ,
Mar 06, 2021 Mar 06, 2021

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How do I find out the resolution of my images? Sorry, I'm new to doing things digitally, I lack severely in tech knowledge. 

Also, I don't intend to print the publication, my doc preset is on 'web', due to remote learning, I'll only be uploading it online for Uni.

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Guide ,
Mar 06, 2021 Mar 06, 2021

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I work in print, and don’t do any work for the web, so I can’t advise you on this. With any luck, someone else on the forum can help you. 

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Community Expert ,
Mar 06, 2021 Mar 06, 2021

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I wrote an article on it here

https://creativepro.com/high-res-image-look-low-res/

 

And google images are protected by copyright - you're better off getting stock images. 

There's a few free stock sites

https://stock.adobe.com/ie/free

https://www.pexels.com/

https://unsplash.com/

https://pixabay.com/

 

Check the image licenses before you use them. 

 

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Community Beginner ,
Mar 06, 2021 Mar 06, 2021

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Thankyou, that's really helpful!

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