Tips for creating your PDF file & art for the LDComics Online Fair
-
- Scan or create your art so that the files are 300dpi at 100% of the desired print size if your are is 4-colour. Save as jpegs. For example, if your art needs to be enlarged 200%, scan your art at 600dpi. If your art is B/W line art, please scan at 600 or 12dpi if you have the memory and save as jpegs. (I usually convert my line art to greyscale/bitmapped tiffs to save memory, which also have transparency when layered in Indesign.) If your art is in colour, please use RGB colour mode for your digital submission.
-
- Lower the resolution to 150dpi and save a COPY of the art file for screen resolution. So you should have two copies: a hi-res file for printing, and one that is for your digital PDF file for the online fair.
-
- We recommend setting your type in and laying out the comic book in Adobe Indesign, Affinity Publisher. Once you have it laid out, you can output the file as a PDF, as spreads, so it reads like a book (without trim marks or bleed, etc). Adobe Illustrator, Affinity Designer or Clip Studio can be used to do this, but there will be limitations as you wouldn’t be able to do a whole book with spreads, and you’d have to do separate pages and put them together in Acrobat, which may make the file size larger. A software program that is raster-based like Photoshop is not advisable to use, but it’s not the end of the world if that’s all you have access to; but there is a chance that the type will look bitmapped or blurry.
-
- When outputting a PDF for printing, you’ll want to use the best resolution (300dpi or higher — high quality or press quality) possible, but if it’s for the online fair, the PDF does NOT have to have the highest resolution — you actually want the smallest file-size possible. Please make your online submission 150dpi at 100% of size for both the PDF and art images. (Please see below for more information on covers and art images.)
-
- Have a look at the file size. If it’s over 30MB, please try to reduce the file size. (Large files can slow down the website and the downloads.) There are two ways to do this. if you have Acrobat (not Reader), you can reduce the file size, but if most of your file consists of placed images, the file size will not change significantly. So, you will need to reduce the art images from 150dpi to 100dpi in Photoshop, and update them in your layout, and output the PDF again. You may notice a slight difference in image quality to the images, so this is why it’s better to keep the resolution as high as possible, and reduce it bit by bit, as you can’t go backwards from a lo-res file and make it better.
- Regarding security/permissions: if you’re restricting printing or editing of your PDF (recommended), we advise against requiring passwords to open the document, AND to keep “Enable text access of screen reader devices for the visually impaired” ticked.
- Regarding cover and pages art:
1) To display your “product” or comic on the website, we are requesting that you re-submit a cover image along with a couple pages or spreads of your comic. We suggest that you keep this at 100% of the size of your publication, 150dpi AND that they are jpegs. We want the images to look as nice as possible (the larger size is good for the zoom feature).
2) For the covers, please do not add any white space (border) around your cover UNLESS this is intentional and part of the design. The website has a white background behind the products, and displays all of the covers at the same width size, so if you have additional white space around it, it will make your cover appear smaller than the others. HOWEVER, if you do have a white (or light) background that goes to the edges of the cover, we recommend adding a 1px (black or grey) keyline border around your cover, to differentiate your cover from the background.
We’ve noticed that some of the covers don’t have author credit. PLEASE PLEASE Please include the author/creator/illustrator (and/or writer if there is more than one creator) on your covers. Please make sure that this is remedied when you submit it with your PDFs on the COMICS submission.
- Have a look at the file size. If it’s over 30MB, please try to reduce the file size. (Large files can slow down the website and the downloads.) There are two ways to do this. if you have Acrobat (not Reader), you can reduce the file size, but if most of your file consists of placed images, the file size will not change significantly. So, you will need to reduce the art images from 150dpi to 100dpi in Photoshop, and update them in your layout, and output the PDF again. You may notice a slight difference in image quality to the images, so this is why it’s better to keep the resolution as high as possible, and reduce it bit by bit, as you can’t go backwards from a lo-res file and make it better.
Leave a Reply