Monitor Your Layouts by Measuring Your Monitor

As designers, we are frequently reminded to check our work at 100% zoom. This is to be sure that we leave no stray pixels on our designs. Also, working at 100% helps in erasing or masking difficult areas.

As a digital scrapbooker, however, I would encourage you not to rely on 100% zoom to check your layouts. You may have noticed that when you use 100% zoom, your layout is HUGE! You can only see a small section at a time at this zoom percentage. Relying on this will not give you the true look of your layout when it has been printed. That's how you and others will be viewing it, right?

The correct way to view your layout as it will look after it's printed is to click on the Print Size button on the Options Bar while the Zoom Tool is selected. (Photoshop and Photoshop Elements) However, to be sure your view is accurate, you must do some advance preparation.

First, measure the width of your screen in inches. Second, determine the resolution that you are using. (Do this by right clicking on the desktop, choosing Properties, and then choosing the Settings tab. Note the Screen resolution given for your monitor. Third, divide the width into the resolution and round to the nearest whole number. Fourth, in Photoshop or Photoshop Elements choose Edit, Preferences, Units and Rulers. In the New Document Preset Resolutions, set your Screen Resolution to the whole number you got at pixels/inch. Lastly, restart Photoshop/Photoshop Elements to use your new settings. If you take a ruler and measure an inch when you have your own rulers turned on, you should see that the measurement is now accurate.

Examples:

The width of my main monitor is 14.25 inches. My screen resolution is set to 1600 x 1200.

1600 divided by 14.25 = 112.28070175438596491228070175439

112.28070175438596491228070175439 rounded to the nearest whole number is 112.

112 is the setting I use in my Preferences.

The width of my secondary monitor is 13.25 inches. My screen resolution is set to 1280 x 1024.

1280 divided by 13.25 = 96.603773584905660377358490566038

96.603773584905660377358490566038 rounded to the nearest whole number is 97.

97 is the setting I use in my Preferences.

The width of my laptop monitor is 13 inches. My screen resolution is set to 1280 x 800.

1280 divided by 13 = 98.461538461538461538461538461538

98.461538461538461538461538461538 rounded to the nearest whole number is 98.

98 is the setting I use in my Preferences.

Using this strategy, you will have better success in judging what textured papers will look like once they have been printed. For more help with textures, read my previous articles, Adding Texture to Your Layouts and Using Patterns to Add Texture. Try using these settings and see if you get a more accurate view of your layouts. Leave me a comment below as to how you made out with this strategy!

Resolution: 200 ppi vs 300 ppi

Every once in awhile, a debate over which print resolution is best will surface on a digital scrapbooking forum. Generally, the discussions seem to get quite heated as each side defends its choice of either 200 ppi or 300 ppi.

At this time in the industry, 300 ppi is generally accepted as the standard. If you shop at a number of sites, you will soon see that the majority offer products created at that standard.

Does this mean that products created at 200 ppi are inferior? Far from it!

There is one very popular store, Digital Scrapbook Place, that creates only at 200 ppi and attempts to educate their buying public to their belief that 200 ppi is the new industry standard. They claim that because digital scrapbook layouts are not being printed on commercial presses but on ink jet printers, resolution does not need to be 300 ppi. In addition, scrapping at this lower ppi also means shorter downloads for the consumer and less strain on computer systems while scrapping. The products at this store are very high quality by such designers as Lauren Bavin, Kim Liddiard, Marcee Duggar, Lisa Carter, Meryl Bartho and many others. If you haven't at least checked them out, you owe it to yourself to at least have a look.

Karen, over at Scraps of Mind, has a wonderful article on this resolution debate. She has also conducted tests herself and finds that in some cases, 200 ppi seems superior. She also references an interesting article by Digital Scrapbook Designer Professionals. Read these references and give yourself a bit more information to make an informed decision.

How does this 200 ppi/300 ppi debate affect me? First, from experience with printing on an ink jet printer, I have successfully printed photos on photo paper at 150 ppi and won awards while competing against other photographers who have had photos professionally printed! I have not printed my own layouts at 150 or even 200 ppi. As a consumer, I now buy only 300 ppi kits. This makes it much easier for me to mix and match items, something I do frequently when I scrap. I seldom will rely on just one kit for a layout . . . I usually pull from 3 to 5 and create some of my own stuff as well! Having to resize items so that they fit my layout gets old quick because though I may have some idea of my starting pieces, I frequently change my mind as I go and if I happened to pull 200 ppi pieces into my layout inadvertently, it would be a real irritant. Though I have bought 200 ppi kits in the past from Digital Scrapbook Place, I no longer shop there for this reason. As a designer, I would not want to limit my target market by designing solely for those who want 200 ppi. That just doesn't make sense to me!

However, digital scrapbooking is about choices . . . you make decisions about paper, elements, fonts . . . become informed about resolution and then make your own decision which one to use.