Question about saving for printing vs saving for galleries

[hulseyfam]

Hi girls, it's ME again!

Ok I just found the directions about saving to 72dpi for uploading in the gallery, but wondered how you save to print?? Flatten image, and then do you save at the max-12??

And another question, do you save your PSD files of your LO for a while or just flatten it and then get rid of the PSD? So what do you do if 4 months down the road you want to upload it for a page call or another site and they have different upload requirements. You can't change it since you got rid of your psd file, right??

Then how do you organize? Do you just have a folder for LOs that have been saved for the web and then LOs that have been saved for printing??? I'm assuming you would probably need one of each of these if you post online and print somewhere else.

Thanks! I just am coming across this as I posted my first LO and now need to know what to do with it for printing and also in case I need it in the future.

[LauraBean]

Howdy!

Here's what I do once I've finished a layout. I print at 8x8, so I resize to 8 x 8 then save as a JPEG, renaming it to be title_print.jpg, at quality 10 or 12 (or 11--just not lower than 10). PSE saves a flattened copy of the PSD, so I don't take the step of flattening the image. Next I choose Save for web, resize to 600 x 600 pixels, quality High (usually that gets it below 150 kb, a common upper limit in galleries), and save with a name like title_web.jpg.

If I printed at 12 x 12 I wouldn't resize except to make a web version. I sometimes save a 12 x 12 version of a layout if I think I might want it big someday. I've only ever printed at that size once, though.

I save my unflattened PSD files on my hard drive for a while, then burn them to DVD and delete from my hard drive. They take up a lot of space! Some folks save as TIFFs, which can take up less space, but I don't bother. Once they're on DVDs, I can get to them if I want to to redo them or repurpose them, which I've occasionally done.

I have a folder within my Digiscrap folder for My Pages; within that I have the PSD, the web version, and the print version. Periodically I move the print versions to a folder called Costco to UPload, since that's how I usually print. Once they're printed, I delete the print versions entirely (I still have the PSDs, remember?). The web versions stay in the My Pages folder until they're uploaded to wherever I'm going to upload them (here at DD, my blog, Facebook, sometimes another gallery), then I move them to a folder within My Pages called Posted. They stay there indefinitely, so I have a low-res archive of all the pages I've done.

[dugarner]

I save my 8X8 at 750X750 px, quality 10, and 12X12 at 500X500 px, quality 10.

I save my PSDs for a year after I print them, then burn them to CD and keep them with my backup data, organized by album where I printed them. I save the flattened JPEGs permanently on my computer since they don't take up much room. Since I have the flattened JPEG, I can change the image size at any time to post to another page. My Designer Digitals JPEGs are called "LO Web" and I leave them in the same folder with the PSDs.

I keep LOs for web and LOs for printing in the same folder, say, "December Daily Book." They have the same name---"December 12 LO" and "December 12 LO Web" That way you can always find them with a search if you need to, and they will come up together.

I'm a bit of a fanatic about organizing my computer, though.

Sarah

[MeEmMom]

Well, this is just what I do, whether it is the most efficient or not I don't know! I always like to keep the .psd files for just the reason you mentioned . . . I might want to change it someday! I also save as a .jpg (at max 12, although I don't bother with the flattening) for printing. Usually the .psd and the .jpg are in the same folder, but only because I tend to scrap chronologically, so I have a folder for each year. THEN (as if that wasn't enough) I have a DD folder where I save a copy at 700x700px - 300 dpi for uploading to DD. Periodically I empty that folder since I don't see the need to keep a copy of the smaller file when it is already on DD and I could always go to the original .psd and save again at any size and resolution that I want.

I hope all of that made sense!