Online materials have heavy competition. With the use of computers, tablets, and smartphones everyday people’s eyes are saturated with images and text. If you want to grab and hold your target audience’s attention for a longer period nothing beats printed materials with good quality and well-chosen images. Because of this is fundamentally important that the right photo is used for your project.
Most companies have already realized that printed materials achieve better results. Business cards, flyers, letterhead, and catalogs, help consolidate the brand. Strengthening its image in the market and increasing sales. So here’s how to choose quality images for printed material.
Representativeness
The first thing to do is choose images that represent your business, product, or service. Make sure the image is in line with the message you want to send.
Remember that in an advertising campaign, the photo of dog food isn’t always the best way to sell dog food: it can be that of puppies playing or a cute and healthy puppy in the company of a child.
The important thing is that the photography captures the essence of your product, emotionally touching the customer.
Are there ideal colors?
The use of colors will depend on the object of the photo, its message, the target audience, and several factors. That is, there is no formula. Black and white photos are more plastic and can be used in campaigns that want to denote nostalgia, sophistication, or vintage items.
There is a tendency to think that warm colors draw more attention in advertising, but their excess can also leave the image “dirty” and tiresome. On the other hand, studies show that green is usually related to ecology, environment, and health, orange and red to foodstuffs, for example.
A survey of 100 companies considered to be of weight by ColourLovers, an online graphic design community, for example, reveals that blue is the most widely used color in logos. On the other hand, according to the psychology of colors applied to marketing, red, royal blue, yellow, and orange attract compulsive consumers, while navy blue and green work best with rational consumers.
According to neuromarketing, some combinations benefit the advertising message – blue and white, blue and red – others devalue it – blue and black, red and yellow – and others have no effect – yellow and green, red and green.
Technical care in printing
Some technical care must be taken so that the image can be printed to the result you expect and what you have seen on the computer screen.
Without them, the risk of the print coming out completely different is higher. Full attention should be spent when sending your images to be printed. Full attention to the next factors of an image should be top of mind when adding a photo to a job for printing.
Color pattern
Remember that when projects are printed, they are using the color pattern CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black).
A computer screen displays the RGB (Red, Green, Blue). Therefore, for the desired color to be achieved, you must use a chromatic scale that is a universal color pattern for printing, such as Pantone.
Resolution
The image, which should be in CMYK, must have a minimum resolution of 300dpi. The higher its resolution, the better quality it will have in its magnification.
When in doubt, feel free to reach out to us for the ideal resolution for the size of your printed material.
All images that aren’t vector should be edited and created in the program they are meant for. For example, it should be handled in Photoshop and only after it is ready, imported into Illustrator.
Optimize your photo
Avoid using effects – such as shadows, gradients, and blends – within the program in which the file is being created.
These structures are very complex and end up greatly increasing the file size and, consequently, the rendering and print time.
Any graphic or filter effect should be applied within the image processing software – and this should be applied to the final file as a bitmap.
By following these tips, you will be contributing to your printed material having better quality and holding the attention of your target audience. Do not forget that the choice of graphics is also extremely important for the quality of your material.