Quality check for papers

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Quality check for papers

Hi all!

I can´t find where we are discussing quality check for digital kits, so I needed to start a new topic, sorry girls smiley But, as I´m finishing my portion of the blog train, I deceided to triple-check the quality check

Well, when we discussed it, someone (Maybe Marisa) pointed out to a great quality check guideline from The Daily Digi. However, most of it deals with checking the quality of elements. So, anyone has another source about papers quality check you can point at?

I don't think there's too much involved with papers except:

a) correct dimensions: 12x12 inches @ 300 dpi
b) saved on "high" when saving as a .jpg

Then just be sure that the pattern used isn't jaggy and that it matches up right...

Any other tips?

Gaumet check is always good. I have a Photoshop action that will do that for you if you'd like. The link is http://sugarbuttdesigns.com/2012/04/04/quality-check-action-freebie-for-you/
I hope this helps hun.
Hugs

Jenn,

I downloaded (and used) your gamut check, but what does it do exactly? I'm guessing it changes all the colors that are out of gamut? By changing it to CMYK and than back to RGB? But why does the action do that a couple of times? Just curious... I'm like that smiley

@Melouise
It does it twice because I'm OCD. smiley
Ok, I admit, I was paying attention to my cute lil man while making it and didn't realize I did it twice until you brought it up. But yes, that's how it works (for the most part, except the twice part)
Hugs

@Jenn, so if I understand this, running the gamut check is in addition to running an action to QC the elements? And does your action actually do the trimming too? Just learning about PS actions since just got CS6.

The action is to run the gamut and will trim also. I love using actions, they help with time. It's easy to do your own actions as well. It's how I did things when learning PS so that I could recall all the steps I did. I would record everything I did and if I didn't like the results I could delete the part of the action I didn't like and go from there. LOVE actions! smiley

Thanks girls! This time I gamut checked by hand, but next time I´ll remember Jen´s action. I have my papers ready to go, just need to see if I can make some elements too, or if it will be a paper pack smiley

Ah, that makes sense smiley I thought women were supposed to be able to do different things at once, lol!

Why do people save digital papers as .jpeg instead of .png? I was reading this article and it seems like .png would be a better choice for digital designs, but I'm just trying to figure out what the best choice would be.

JPG vs PNG
Which File Format Should You Choose?

The help manual of a popular screen capture program offers the following suggestions

GIF format is limited to 256 colors and is a lossless compression file format, a common choice for use on the Web. GIF is a good choice for storing line drawings, text, and iconic graphics at a small file size.

PNG format is a lossless compression file format, which makes it a common choice for use on the Web. PNG is a good choice for storing line drawings, text, and iconic graphics at a small file size.

JPG format is a lossy compressed file format. This makes it useful for storing photographs at a smaller size than a BMP. JPG is a common choice for use on the Web because it is compressed. For storing line drawings, text, and iconic graphics at a smaller file size, GIF or PNG are better choices because they are lossless.

George adds – “JPEGs are for photographs and realistic images. PNGs are for line art, text-heavy images, and images with few colors.

@Lizzy: It actually depends... Here's my analysis and other people more experienced can add to this smiley

You save as jpg mainly because of the file size... and the fact that it holds/retains all the info we need as digital scrappers just like our photos are at jpg unless you shoot raw like some people.

NOW, that being said there are times you want to save a background as a png... this is when you want to maintain the transparency of it. Say you created a roughed up edges background that wasn't fully 12x12 (maybe 11 3/4x 11 3/4) and you created it that way on purpose so it could be stacked on another solid plain background... Then you would want to save it as a png. It will be bigger, but it is the only way it will be able to be usable to digiscrappers. If you saved it as a jpg it would have about a 1/4" white border around it.

I have downloaded papers that were just plain backgrounds (no transparency needed) before as both and the file size is a tremendous difference. One as a jpg was 5.26mb and the same paper as a png was 28.9mb That's just one example. If you only had 10 papers and 10-15 elements, your kit would be well over 325mb most likely if you saved all your papers as png's. smiley

Hope this is somewhat helpful. And I'm sure some of these fantastic designers around here can explain it a little better from the designer side than I can as I'm just sharing a scrappers/amateur photographers perspective.

You said it well Shawna. The size is the main thing. You don't gain much in precision since papers are usually quite variegated in their color, but you do save quite a lot on space and downloading time!

Another nasty thing about .png is that it does not allow meta data to be written into the file. You could use keywords in a program like PSE Organizer but if your database became corrupted or lost all your links to your .png's would be lost as well and you could start over again. That is why Apple's Aperture and Adobe's Lightroom will not import .png's. In fact Kayla Lamoraux who has written various classes on organizing digi stash talks you as a student through converting all your .png's into .tiff format so they can be imported into Lightroom for organizing. .png files are already large in size, converting them into .tiff only makes them larger.

A lot of people only import their papers(.jpg's) and previews(also jpg's) into Lightroom for organizing.

Gif is a format that not longer is used due to it's license problems. It was owned by Compuserve and because of that png was developed that also supports transparency and most developers stopped using gif.

Thank you! I can see why the file size would be important!

One more thing to consider when QC'ing papers... make sure they are not blurry at full size- your textures especially but any pattern too. You can sharpen if you find blurriness.

One of the things I've found myself doing, in addition to checking at 100% zoom, is checking to see what it looks like in true sizing...in GIMP for me at 300 dpi, for a 12x12 that's setting the zoom to be 32.7%. I had a small clear 6" ruler that I used to calculate that, until my daughter came home for spring break, and it's disappeared somewhere. She for now is a stanch hands-on scrapper, and is resisting with a passion going digital or even hybrid! So I'm not sure if she's taken that ruler to school, or it's just hidden in her scrapping supplies here at home, lol.

I have one more thing to add for QCing papers - something I've had troubles with myself. Always zoom to 100% and check all of your edges to be sure every color, pattern, and overlay you used on the paper goes all the way to the edge. Its remarkably easy to end up with a strip along the bottom that is white or doesn't have the same texture.

Heather, does your software have a way to "snap to canvas edges"? I use that in GIMP, when I fear something got out of place. Find myself turning it off and on at times those, if I need to put something to close to the edge though and it wants to pull it all the way to the boundary.

I don't know... I use Photoshop CS6. Anyone know if it has that? I know how to snap to grid...

Quote:
One of the things I've found myself doing, in addition to checking at 100% zoom, is checking to see what it looks like in true sizing...in GIMP for me at 300 dpi, for a 12x12 that's setting the zoom to be 32.7%. I had a small clear 6" ruler that I used to calculate that, until my daughter came home for spring break, and it's disappeared somewhere. She for now is a stanch hands-on scrapper, and is resisting with a passion going digital or even hybrid! So I'm not sure if she's taken that ruler to school, or it's just hidden in her scrapping supplies here at home, lol.

If I design a paper (which most of mine are) for hybrid stuff since I use my digital cutter a lot, I will print a 2"x2" square of the paper to see how it looks. This is probably about the same as what you are doing. I do this so I can check to make sure the texture I've added to the papers don't look ugly when printed. I've downloaded some really pretty papers only to find that they were horrible printed because of the texturing.

@Heather: What you want is the move tool, which can align things. I added it to the tutorial poll here, also I talk a little about it in this tutorial.

Thanks Marisa!

Thanks Lorien, you helped me double-check everything. Jen, I downloaded you QC-action, thank you, it will be of good use