In my personal experience you can usually only increase clarity in exchange for DPI.  The image can only be as good as the original in most cases.  Do you know the DPI in which the image was scanned or captured?  How did you acquire the image?

I have done this in the past when I created something for the web at 72 DPI and then the customer wanted to make a sign or something out of it and the print shop needed at least 300 DPI.  Usually, I will open the image in PhotoShop and change the resolution in 1 simple step while keeping the print size the same and then save it as a .tif for better print quality.  Most print shops require a .tif for them to manipulate the image properly.  What is the nature of your application?  What type of application will the final image be used?

Streamline doesn't work without Illustrator. Neither Streamline or Illustrator will OPEN JPG/BMP, they PLACE and TRACE them.

Upping the resolution of a raster/bitmap will result in poor quality. If it's a logo/line drawing, your best bet is to place it in Illustrator (or Freehand, either works) and trace/recreate it.

Vector art WILL scale, as much as you want, with NO loss of quality. You can also place it in Photoshop and export as raster/bitmap, or export directly from Illustrator/Freehand.

If it's a photo, you won't have a choice -- you'll need to increase the resolution in Photoshop/PaintShopPro/whatever you use (PLEASE don't use Paint!!!). Doing this will degrade the image to some extent. Depending on what type of image it is, it might still be acceptable.

You wouldn't need to go to 600 dpi -- 300 dpi is usually adequate for most things. You might even be able to get by with 200 dpi, but you should check with whoever is going to do the printing.

What I meant is that you won't be able to use what you get from Streamline without Illustrator -- so just having Streamline isn't going to do much but give you a file you can't do anything with. ;-)

Karin,

I would recommend rescanning at the higher DPI and saving the file in PNG format if it's available to you. Most Adobe programs will recognize PNG files, and they resize very clearly whereas JPGs and the like do not. From there you should be able to turn it into a vector graphic importing it into Illustrator. If rescanning is not an option. you may be able to use an Image Size option which may give an option to change the DPI. Photoshop does this, but it simply makes the image bigger. This works fine for an unrasterized text layer, but rasterized layers badly distort.

B.

STREAMLINE

Convert your file to either a PSD or TIF in Photoshop or the likes, open in Streamline, play around with the settings and it will convert your picture to a vector.
Output: So so, it can give your picture a nice effect, but it rarely gives you a cleencut vector.

ILLUSTRATOR

According to 'weed' there is an auto trace fuction.
Output: sub-par results.

You could also trace your image using the Pen tool.
Output: By far the best way of converting to vector, but it can take forever depending on the size of your image.

PHOTOSHOP

Open your image, make sure it's in RGB mode, Set your DPI to 300 or whatever desireable size. Blur the image about 3-5px. Use Image-Adjust-Index and move the white and the black markers towards the center.
Output: Now, this doesn't actually make your image vector, but it can give you a very smooth large version of your image.



sina
london

Hi Karin,

1.) Vector Format
The easiest way from Photoshop 6 or higher to output into a vector format for printing is to:

File, Save As, Photoshop PDF.  Open Acrobat Reader and print file to test print quality.

2.) DPI
300 dpi is fine.  If your file is currently lower than 300 dpi, than you can only increase the dpi and not lose quality if: the print size is greater than what the final size of the printed image will be.  To see this in Photoshop, go to Image/Image Size.  

If the Print Size listed is not greater than the final output's printed size, then you need to rescan or have the graphic artist recreate at a higher res.  

If the Print Size is greater than the final output, to increase the DPI without losing quality, simply remember what the current pixel width and height values are in (Image/Image Size), increase the DPI value, hit OK, then go back to Image/Image Size and enter in your original pixel width and height values.  This will in turn decrease the Print Size values (in inches), with the corresponding DPI you entered.  

If the new Print Size is equal or greater than the final output of the printed image, then you are set.  If it is too small, you will have to try again with a lower DPI, until you get close to the size the image will be printed at.  If you can't get there with the desired DPI, then you will need new original artwork.

3.) Vector art is nice but not always required.  If you have artwork that is 300 dpi or higher a Tiff or even a JPG is fine.  I've sent JPG's in for T-shirts which printed out superb.  I've used Tiffs for many projects as well.  But I  prefer .PDF.

Hope that all made sense.  Have a nice day!

John McMillion
john@johnmcmillion.com
www.johnmcmillion.com