208 dpi photo on 5.5x8.5 booklet cover

[streetsnake]

Hi everyone. I wanted to see if you could provide me your thoughts. I’m trying to secure a job of booklets. The cover was completed by a graphic designer utilizing InDesign. Part of the cover utilized a photo which is 1296 px sq, 208 dpi. The finished booklet will be 5.5x8.5. I ran a sample, supposedly utilizing the highest res cover available. It came out okay but far from ideal. I sent the sample to the client. They felt the photo looked pixelated/blurry, which is accurate. Lol. However the graphic designer told the account that is should not be and was going to print a copy to send to the account. Our c70 produces very high quality prints but is it possible that another printer, potentially a desktop, photo printer, could make it look good? As mentioned before, I’m still learning when it comes to all the various printers out there. My concern is, even if the designer can produce a print that looks better, it is not plausible to use a printer like that for an order of 500 booklets, correct?

 

[Magnus59]

Was the photo 208ppi at the scale used on the cover? When you say it was 1296 px sq, do you mean it was 1296x1296 pixels in size?
If so, if not cropped, the photo should reproduce OK at 5.5x5.5" rule of thumb for offset is 300ppi at output size, but digital presses are a little more forgiving.
There are also other factors. Has the image bee saved with jpeg compression? if so, jpeg artifacts in the image will affect the quality. Note that jpeg compression is cumulative, so avoid re-saving an image with compression where possible.

 

[streetsnake]

Was the photo 208ppi at the scale used on the cover? When you say it was 1296 px sq, do you mean it was 1296x1296 pixels in size?
If so, if not cropped, the photo should reproduce OK at 5.5x5.5" rule of thumb for offset is 300ppi at output size, but digital presses are a little more forgiving.
There are also other factors. Has the image bee saved with jpeg compression? if so, jpeg artifacts in the image will affect the quality. Note that jpeg compression is cumulative, so avoid re-saving an image with compression where possible.

Thanks Magnus. I’m not sure on your question about pixels. Attached is the part of the cover in question. This is a pic of a printed off cover on glossy 100#C. I used the same image 18 months or so ago on the web and wasn’t very impressed with the resolution back then and that was on a smaller image overall. Now it’s been “blown” up a bit more.

 

[Magnus59]

When you open the image in Photoshop and select image size, what are the dimensions in pixels?
There are a lot of jpeg artifacts in the image you posted, but some of those will be from the photo you took of the print.
Can you share the original image?

 

[streetsnake]

When you open the image in Photoshop and select image size, what are the dimensions in pixels?
There are a lot of jpeg artifacts in the image you posted, but some of those will be from the photo you took of the print.
Can you share the original image?

Hi Magnus. I just pulled it up. It is showing 3839 x 2909 (12.797" x 9.697")

 

[picman]

It could probably stand a little image sharpening.
Google up "image sharpening Dan Margulis" and "image sharpening Jeff Schewe"
It becomes another subject that the more you look into it, the deeper it gets.