Clipart ?

[Jackie H.]

Forgive me if this has been discussed before, but currently the seach engine is down.

Does anyone here use clipart in their scrapbooks? I have learned so much on this site about fonts! Although I have been scrapbooking for years and consider myself fairly computer "useful", it had never occured to me to make a title from the computer! (duh...) Now, thanks to the kindness of many of you - instructions on exactly what to do and how to to it, and emailing me Disney fonts - my titles are beautiful!

So then I got to thinking, does it work with clip art too? What are the issues I should be concerned about? I have downloaded a few clipart items before (making birthday party invitations for my kid's parties) and sometimes they don't translate into very good printed pictures. Is there a way to correct that?

Thanks in advance for any help in this area.

Also, I want to thank all of you for this wonderful board! It has combined my two most favorite things: scrapbooking and Disney! I have learned so much about digital photography and cameras and fonts and gotten so many great ideas from looking at people's pages!

 

[dizneegirl]

You can use clipart, but remember that anything downloaded off the net is probably very lo-res...

Quick "lesson", if you're interested:

Computer art goes by dpi (dots per inch)... art created for a computer monitor or TV screen is lo-res, typically 72 dpi (as that's all that's visible on a monitor or TV). It's also one of two file types, jpeg or gif...

JPEGs are highly compressed files, to make them small, so they download quickly. They are usually used for photos, and highly colored artwork. They're RGB (red, blue green - which is what you use for monitors & TV screens). They're created with what is known as a "lossy" compression - i.e. - details are lost the more compressed the file is... same-colored pixels are smooshed together to save on file space.

GIFs are generally used for clipart, and are generally based on a computer palette (8-bit, 16-bit or 24-bit color). They are even smaller than jpegs.

JPEGs and GIFs are both raster images... they are made up of pixels. If you enlarge a raster image, the pixels get enlarged... that's why you see the jagged edges (also known as pixelization). At normal size, the pixels blend in to look like smooth lines and edges.

Print-quality graphics are generally 300dpi... which allows for more detail, and less chance of pixelization in raster images. More dots-per-inch will be denser, and you can enlarge them a little without losing too much quality. Print graphics are also built in CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black)... the standard ink colors for 4-color printing (not RGB, like screen graphics).

If you find a large piece of clipart on the net, and reduce it in size, you'll be able to print a half-way decent quality picture. A small graphic enlarged will distort terribly. A lo-res graphic printed at 100% size will be a 50/50 proposition... it might look ok, it might not.

If you have a scanner and a paint program, one of the best ways to get high-quality character pics is to get coloring books, scan the picture & then color it in.

Hope that helps...

 

[chessie]

dizneegirl,

Thank you sooooo much for explaining all of that in terms we can all understand. Growing up just ahead of the computer age often puts me behind the 8 ball when it comes to understanding the whys and why nots of the computer. It is so nice to have things explained in plain-folk language. Now I know who to ask my next question.

chessie

 

[MICKEY M0USE]

I have found another way to use clip art. If I need a diecut of something I don't have (a sailboat, for example), I find clip art with clean lines of the picture I'm looking for. I then print it out and put it through my xyron machine and stick it to cardstock. I then cut out picture and peel off the paper from the cardstock. Instant die cut! You need a xyron with a repositionable cartridge, but it would probably work with a light box if you were tracing on light colored cardstock. I hope I explained that OK.