Capturing the Perfect Digital Images for Your Newsletter
Digital cameras have become somewhat of a lifesaver for those of us who produce newsletters. Collecting a last minute photograph is now a lot more doable and a lot less stressful for everyone involved.
From a graphic designer’s perspective, a digital camera is the perfect tool for boosting creativity. The Newsletter Factory’s senior art director Kyle Sox said, ‘Digital cameras make being creative more convenient. I’ll frequently have an image in my head that I want to use as a background in a newsletter and am often unable to find it on stock photography Web sites. With my digital camera, I’m able to create it.”
Kyle recommends creating your own stock photography library by simply spending a little time each week taking photographs around your office, home, or places you may visit frequently such as parks, hiking trails, etc. “I’ve used images I’ve taken outside our offices of acorns on the ground, moss on bark, and fiery orange fall leaves on the trees in our parking lot,” he said.
Kyle also likes the convenience of being able to take his time with an image by photographing a subject at different angles, and particularly likes an image he took through the barrel of a cannon at a local park.
And natural lighting is always preferable to artificial lighting. Early morning and evenings are the best times to take pictures because of the shadows that enhance the shape and texture of your photo subject.
If you’re in a bind and find you have to take a photo of a person indoors, be conscious of the surrounding foreground and background. Try not to include someone’s lunch leftovers or a fire extinguisher or in the picture. And try not to use the wall in their office as a background. Not only is this type of background uninteresting, it also creates harsh shadows.
Additionally, when taking photos indoors, avoid red-eye by increasing the quantity of light in the room. And if you have problems with blurry images, instead of pressing the button quickly at once, press it halfway and hold until the camera fine-tunes the image, then press the button the rest of the way.
Since 300 dpi images are the standard for print newsletters, always shoot at the highest possible resolution your camera will allow. Good digital images take up a lot of space on a flash card, and cards with 128 mb or more have the most room, less will save only about seven to 10 images.
Uncompressed .tif images and low compression, high quality .jpg images are the best images for print newsletters. Never try to submit a .gif image for a print newsletter; they are for Web use only. And most graphic designers prefer raw images —those that haven’t been cropped or altered in any way.
Finally, don’t submit images to graphic designers that have been embedded into a Word document or have been lifted from a PowerPoint presentation. And even if you can’t open an image file, send it anyway, chances are the graphic designer will have the capability.
Keeping these few tips in mind will make the production process go much more smoothly. Not only will you provide better images, it will save everyone’s valuable time.
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