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Laser Printout to Printing House

Copyright 1995, 1997 Virginia Lawrence

If you plan to send laser printout to the printing house, your printout should be high-resolution printout. That’s because the printer will take your pages and photograph them to create the film for the printing plates. Since the film is a copy of your pages, the film and the resulting plates will have a slightly lower resolution than your original pages. The final printed book will also have a lower resolution than your original pages, so it’s best to start the process with the highest possible resolution.

What’s resolution as applied to laser output? Resolution is measured in dots per inch. The greater the number of dots per inch, the higher the resolution.

Today, on a reasonable budget, you can produce laser printout in either of two resolutions:

- 300 dots per inch (dpi)

- 600 dots per inch (dpi)

There are 1200 dpi laser printers on the market too, but the prices are high. Such high-resolution laser printers are unnecessary for book preparation. It makes more sense to send your electronic book files to the printing house to produce a book of equal or higher resolution.

At the lowest level of resolution, you can send your 300 dpi laser printout to the printing house. Historically, you have lots of company. Small software firms and self-publishers have been sending 300 dpi laser printout ever since the 300 dpi laser printers became available in the mid 1980s. However, even an untrained eye notes the obviously lower quality of a 300 dpi book when comparing it to a higher resolution book. Although 300 dpi laser printout submissions were common until recently, we can produce higher resolution now, and readers expect higher resolution.

At the next level of resolution, you can send 600 dpi laser printout to the printing house. At 600 dpi, your book will appear appreciably clearer than a 300 dpi book. The 600 dpi lines and letters will be finer than those in a 300 dpi book, and your graphics will be easier to distinguish. Many of the smaller software companies and independent book publishers are still submitting their books in 600 dpi laser printout.

Electronic Files to Printing House

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virginia@cognitext.com

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