Content Contributors Image & Illustration Data Guidelines

by Armin C. Stross-Radschinski — last modified Mar 16, 2012 05:11 PM

How to deliver your data in the best formats suitable for our professional Python Brochure for print & download version.

Please make sure to look at the Mediadata overview page for the general informations.

Logos of your Company or Organisation

If you are part of a story in the Python Brochure and your logo makes sense in the context we would like to have the best suitable file for it. As you might know, PDF-Files or Printed materials can deliver much higher resolutions than screen media and you can see the difference!

If you have resources for this online simply send us a link or e-mail the files. Consult the following infos on file formats to check first if you meet the specs. Feel free to send an early e-mail for approval.

Photos & Illustration

Photos

Photos need 300dpi (dots/pixels per inch) resolution for printing.

For a 210mm wide full page photo you need an image width of 210mm /2.54mm(1 inch)x300px~=2480px

For a 297mm high full page photo you need an image width of 297mm /2.54mm(1 inch)x300px~=3507px

Add some pixels more for bleed on the page cutting edge. If you have a little bit less its not a drama.

Take some time: If you have only the second best files handy, take the time to ask the internal people at the source if they have access to the original files.

Illustrations

Most of the time vector graphics are the best format for illustration data. If possible try to keep these and avoid converting this into pixels. If you can make PDF, EPS or SVG files from it and you can view a close up zoom in on screen without "jaggies" you are right.

If you can only deliver pixel files take care that the resolution is appropriate. If you have graphs and they are application screenshots the native resolution may fine. If you have scientific diagrams SVG is better if available.

Screenshots

If your application is a website or desktop interface you can produce regular screenshots with your OS tools. If you are on MacOSX or using a webkit browser, you may give webkit2png written in python a try or use the nice paparazzi application on MacOSX to make superior vector based browser shots that scale fantastic in print (except pixel content) and keep text editable if you choose PDF as fileformat (always choose PDF first!).

Paparazzi is written in ObjectiveC based on webkit2png. Version 0.5b6 is usable for production! http://derailer.org/paparazzi/ webkit2png is a commandline tool written by Paul Hammond in pyObjC. http://www.paranoidfish.org/projects/webkit2png/

Type & Fonts (for illustration files)

If fonts are essential for displaying your information (i.e. with symbol fonts or corporate designs), the files may look good on your computer but not on other machines. In this case it is a good idea to make sure you included your fonts properly in a PDF or convert all your type into curves. This avoids loosing the proper styles of your data. On the other hand we may need to change some tables or styles to fit our design. In this case a version with editable text is more suitable for our postprocessing. So the best is providing both:

A visual correct PDF-File with included fonts or your programs source format with type converted to outline curves.
A second PDF file with copyable text and your programs source format with regular text and maybe provided fonts if applicable due to license etc.

Slides

We have download acces on slideshare.com . We can read Impress, Keynote and PowerPoint files but the font problems above stay in this case too if you use special fonts not publicly available. If you provide a PDF Version of your slides, make sure no downsampling is applied on your pixel data! If you have vector based source files of important diagrams placed in the slides, please provide the master data in format described above.

Format guidelines

Data format specifications for the Python Brochure Content.

Vector Images (preferred format)

Please send the vector data as EPS, SVG or PDF format.
Important: fonts have to be embedded (EPS, PDF) or converted into paths (EPS, PDF, SVG)!

Bitmap Images (suboptimal)

Acceptable format are JPG, PNG, TIFF, EPS, PSD, GIF
RGB is fine for bitmap files, but please be aware that we cannot guarantee for correct color reproduction.
Images have to use 300 DPI, for line graphics 600dpi or more are better.
Low quality images will be printed as delivered.