First of all…yes and no…. the GIF is not part of the final product but is a template to catch the images and locate them in the final design on web site. This is the client’s request and other designers have done this for him. What she is doing is designing greeting cards where she must create a template (mask). In other words, she designs a greeting card with a square area in the middle where a customer uploads a family photo to the client’s web site and the photo automatically gets placed into the design.
How big is this template? A GIF is suitable for on-screen display, but not suitable for printing, and an image that is suitable for printing in any format is going to be far too large to view in a Web browser.
The best way to approach this is to use TWO files–one for the Web, then another for print. The one for the Web would be smaller than the image used for print; the image used for print would be high-resolution, not a GIF, and would print with higher quality. (A GIF can have only 256 colors; this means a GIF is going to do very poorly art reproducing photographic images or gradients of color.)
The trick
is to design it so that the border of the card and bells and holly etc in the design create a shadow on the family photo…making it look like the photo is part of the card.
You can do this with a hard shadow, but not a soft shadow. The GIF format does not allow translucency. Something is 100% transparent or 100% opaque; that’s all that is permitted.
Finally the cards are printed for the customer
and mailed.
How are they printed? Inkjet printer? Laser printer? Printing press?
The client wants the 2400X1650 8inches X 5.5 Inches. HE says it has to be 300ppi.
Well, 2400×1650 pixels is indeed 8.5×5.5 at 300 pixels per inch. But your client is mistaken if he believes that he has 300 pixel per inch GIF images; the GIF specification does not permit it. The GIF standard has no provision for saving resolution. A 2400×1650 pixel GIF is 2400×1650 pixels, that’s it–no pixel per inch information is stored.
When she converts it from PSD to GIF it becomes HUGE
33×23 INCHES.
Of course. Image editing programs assume a default resolution of 72 pixels per inch for image formats that do not support resolution. But your client should not be printing the GIF anyway.
You can see the cards at www.premier-photo-cards.com
Visited the site. The templates on the Web site are not high resolution; they are 369×250 pixels. (By the way, the Web site does not appear to work correctly with all browsers. The "Preview" button does nothing for me, when I use internet Explorer, Netscape, or Safari for the Mac, or Internet Explorer for Windows 2000–this is after I’ve uploaded an image and cropped it.)
Your client does not understand image formats or resolution. The best advice I have is to get your hands on some of the files that other designers have created,a nd find out how they were made–what format, what resolution, and what pixel dimension.
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