Kristin Peterson: mixed media, collage, painter, artist

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

lesson and a tip

i worked last night to get my permission, contributor info, caption and a great photo of my art work submitted for the book Incite 4. most of it was easy- sign here and there; i am the artist - check, and i own the copyright- check, check. the tricky part was photographing my art work.



i had already put a varnish finish onto the piece so i had one corner was that particularly tricky- as it kept looking "foggy." i must have taken at least 30 photos over 2 hours last night moving the lights in small increments, smoothing my background, moving my camera millimeters to try and get the best photo.

now that i had a great photo- the submission info for the photo stated that i needed to have 300 dpi for my pic. what in the heck does this mean? and how do i verify that i have that? especially after i spent almost 2 hours trying to get a good pic and now my pic info is only showing how many pixels my photo is......

after much googling and reading several articles that really had not been helpful, i found one that explained how to figure this dpi thing out and made it super easy! **so here is the lesson: if you know how many inches are allowed for the photo, you take the 300 (dpi) x the number of inches = the number of pixels that you can have.

i could have a print area for my photo of 9" x 12" so i took the 300 x 9 = 2700 pixels for my height, and 300 x 12 = 3600 for the width; and my actual pixels were 2232 x 2554. i couldn't be beyond that allowable number of pixels i had calculated- so i was able to determine....i was good!

and now the tip.....have you had to send a pic and/ or documents to someone and needed or wanted to know that they had received it for sure? in the past i have used dropbox. and this has worked really well, but, .......

with this process, i was asked to use something called WeTransfer. super impressed with this!! it is free, and allowed me to send the pic, and all of my documents in one folder. it also sent me an email saying what i had put into my folder to send, and will notify me when my recipient has opened and downloaded my stuff. loved this!!

this post is for you. (but, selfishly, it is really for me for next time!)

happy wednesday!

4 comments:

  1. Why thank you for sharing this! Haven't had anything published yet. Might just get out of my comfort zone and give it a try and as I'm not good in math (I used to be in school, but that's just been sooooooo long ago) so I'm gonna print this out.... I know I'm just so very old school!
    Thanks Kristin!

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  2. I loved reading your post - and feel your pain! I was fortunate in that the piece I submitted and that was accepted had already been photographed professionally by a friend who makes my prints. But I still had issues getting it to send in the right file size! LOL. But most importantly - this piece you submitted is absolutely stunning! It is nearly electric it is so vibrant and beautiful. Hugs today, friend.

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  3. So excited for you that you are being published! Appreciate the tip about WeTransfer. I too have used Dropbox. I edit all of my photos in Photoshop Elements and it makes it very easy to select the dpi. Love your work, Kristin!

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thanks for your comments- i love hearing from you!!