Why do I care? Once again I found myself posting at peas about 200 vs 300 ppi. Argh. See just the other day I was talking to a popular designers about these types of controversial threads. And she said that the best bet is just to be friends with everyone and try not to piss people off. And I know this to be true. I mean this is a business after all. And if I make store owners mad that are doing all these great things and having these huge business opportunities chances are it will come back to bite me in the behind when I am not invited to join one of these opportunies. And I wish I could just let things go. But there are a few times that I have jumped into these kinds of conversations. Why do I care? Well because I just think it's wrong. I do. Of course there are all sorts of horrible injustices in the world and things like these don't matter in the grand scheme of things. Of course. But I must say I really love digiscrapping. I love it. It helped to save me at a time I thought I wouldn't ever care about anything again. At a time I didn't want to care about anything. And I found this passion. IN the midst of pain. It's like my baby. I am just so protective of it. So this lame 200 vs 300 ppi thing. You know why I think it bothers me so much? Because I was new once. So were you. And you went to websites trusting them to show you the ropes. You idolized some designers and scrappers and looked to them for the information to get you started. You know the first few pages I did, the first 5 I'd say were all in the PSP default of 72 ppi. I was SO sad when I realized they were pretty useless to me for printing. It broke my heart in a small way. And I think that teaching newbies to use 200 ppi does the same thing to new scrappers in 2 ways. First when they realize that most of the digital scrapbooking world does 300 they will feel that same feeling I had that their first few pages aren't as great anymore. And then there are those who use 300 but go to THE site that sells at 200, see NO posting anywhere at the store that their designs are 200 ( I sure hope this has changed since I was there a couple weeks ago. I will be VERY disappointed to find out that after having it mentioned that they are not being clear they do not desire to be so) and then the newbies BUY stuf with their hard earned money and have the SAME feeling of disappointment when they drop the 200 ppi papers and elements on a 300 canvas and they are tiny. It's these scrappers who have no idea how to blow things up with minimal loss of quality. I was surprised by the number of comments and personal emails I got from people who said they felt this way when they realized that the stuff they bought was 200. They felt cheated and duped. And I don't blame them. Okay so these kind of rants get me in trouble. I sure do wish I was able to seperate myself from the controversy. I wish I didn't care as much. But this is my baby and I will go down protecting her.
posted by Kim at 3:45 PM
5 Comments:
You know what irritates me the most about the whole issue, though? The ONE site that does it is the only place insisting it's the best, and they say on their site (somewhere...I wouldn't be able to find it if I tried) that it's the "industry standard". Umm...hi. Industry standard would mean what more than one site is doing, right? So if there are 100 sites selling creations at 300 ppi, and 1 site selling at 200 ppi...what's the industry standard then? I mean c'mon...grab a freaking brain!! It just irritates me. My printer doesn't even print 300 ppi very well. Like hell I'm going to go with their extremely uninformed advice and print at 200!! They are INSANE! But, I can't post this because my poor heart wouldn't be able to withstand the beating it would get when 99.9% of their members came down on me. LOL!
OK, coming out of lurkdom here just to say how much I appreciate you being willing to take a stand. I was one of those newbies who came to 2peas looking for the answers and thought I could make pages at 200 that would be just fine -- but when I printed them I could see the difference. So stand strong, Kim -- don't be afraid to speak your mind because people DO look up to you and hear you, and you DO make a difference.
200ppi/300ppi may not sound like a big deal to non digiscrappers, but when it down to holding their hard worked pages in their hands, it'll be night and day.
::hug::
Kris (dreamwyvr)
Hi, Kim,
I am glad you spoke up because I think digiscrappers have confidence in you. I prefer to use 300 ppi because as someone said, we don't know what the future will be like. Also, it is easier to size something down than up.
A side note: Kim, you have come so far. You should be proud of what you have accomplished. Not only are you a great and knowledgeable designer, you are always willing to help.
I agree that teaching new digital scrappers that 200 DPI is the "industry standard" is wrong, why would it even be considered the standard when only ONE site (to my knowledge) creates their kits to print at 200, and the rest of the digital scrapping world creates at 300? This limits the new scrappers to use only THEIR products, as the new scrapper will quickly realize that the two just don't mix well unless you want to do a lot of resizing.
Another thing I don't get is the site in question posts many articles, some of which say that a print should be at least 240 DPI for small photos and 300 DPI for larger ones (HP Digital Photography has stated this, Kodak says at least 225, and ScanTips says that although 240 is typically fine that 300 is recommended). So why go DOWN to 200...wouldn't it make more sense to raise your design standard to 300 and have those extra pixels to work with? The more pixels in an image, the sharper the photos, this is why people get so much better results in their larger prints with their 4-6 MP camera than their 2-3 MP ones...there are more pixels to work with. So the sites they are posting aren't even agreeing with what they are saying.
And why should digital scrapping supplies be set at a lower standard than digital photos? Digital photos make up 3/4 of our layouts in most cases...do we want to print our photos at 200 DPI? Unless one is printing the supplies and the photos separately and cut and paste them onto the layout (which defeats the purpose of digital scrapping being quick and easy), the photos will be printed out at 200 DPI on a 200 DPI layout.
And even if a product is saved at the highest quality of 200 PPI, this doesn't change the fact there are still less pixels, and in order to add the item to a 300 DPI layout, it must be enlarged.
Even though I haven't posted on that 2Peas thread, I totally agree with your opinion on this, Kim!
Always stand up for what you believe in Kim! You are admirable for having the courage to stand behind what you believe and protect those who don't know, We are all thankful to you.
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