All of your digital images will be stored within your saved EZBook file after you have imported them. As a result of this, you will not need to send the actual image files to us when you submit your book for publishing. Images may only be imported in RGB format.

Image Color Profile

EZBook accepts only RGB images. Any other images such as CMYK will need to be converted to RGB before they will be able to be imported.JPEG images with the Nikon sRGB color profile embedded in them will print very dark when imported into EZBook. This non-standard color profile will need to be removed from all of the images before they will be able to be imported.

Image Resolution

Resolution is a very important factor to consider when looking at your digital images. Resolution is measured in DPI, which stands for dots per inch. Your book will be printed with a maximum resolution of 300 DPI. Thus, you will want to have the resolution of your pictures above 250 DPI at the size they will appear in your book. Going above 300 DPI is not necessary and will be unused quality. Because of this, your images need to be as close to 300 dpi as possible.

Changing Image Resolution

Many people try to increase the resolution of low resolution images in software such as Photoshop.
Unfortunately, this usually makes the image quality worse. There is only a fixed amount of information in an image, and by increasing the resolution and leaving the image size the same, you are asking the software to add more pixels to the image. The software is then forced to guess what each added pixel should look like based on the other pixels around it. A common result is that the images will become pixelated or fuzzier than they previously were.

If an image did not start out with a high resolution, 250 DPI or above, the best way to increase the resolution is to retake the picture at a higher camera setting or rescan the image at 300 DPI.
*TIP* The previous advice does not apply to digital camera images that have been taken at a high quality setting. They will have a low resolution, typically 72 DPI, but the image size will be large enough to compensate for the resolution. This is because the images actually have the extra pixels needed to increase the resolution when decreasing the size of the photo.

Web Images

Images that are downloaded from the web will generally have a low resolution of 72 DPI and will print poorly. Additionally, these images are usually copyrighted. It is not recommended that you use them in your book.

Digital Images

If you plan to take pictures with a digital camera, you should set your camera to take the pictures in the 2-4 megapixel range. Many digital cameras take pictures that are much larger than necessary and it is advisable to either turn your digital camera’s quality settings down or to reduce their size before importing them into EZBook.If you have a camera that is over 4 megapixels, you may wish to turn down the quality setting on the camera so that the pictures that it takes are not exceptionally large. Additionally, you should review and select only those pictures likely to be used in your yearbook prior to importing them. This will help to ensure the best performance of your computer while working on the book.

Conventional Photos

If you will be taking photographs with a conventional film camera, you can ask your local photo finisher to provide you with a High Resolution RGB CD. You will be able to import these images directly from the CD into EZBook.

*TIP* For best performance, you may wish to crop or otherwise edit these images before importing them into EZBook.

Scanning Images

If you choose to scan pictures, the resolution must be set to 300 DPI for a scan at 100%. If you plan to enlarge a photo after importing, then the resolution of the scan must be increased by the same magnitude to compensate for the enlargement. For example, a two inch picture scanned at 300 DPI will be two inches when placed on a page. However, that same image scanned at 600 DPI would allow you to make the image as large as four inches on your page because the image would be 300 DPI at four inches.

File Formats

JPEG, TIFF, and PNG are all acceptable file formats.These formats are chosen when you save your images either in scanning or image editing software. JPEG filesshould be saved at high quality and are the preferred file format because of their small size. PNG is typically used for clip art because of the ability to set the background of the image to be transparent. You should not use PNG for candids.