Analyzing your digital files for giclee
Let's look one more time at file preparation. As you know we do not provide a money back guarantee with client supplied digital files. The reason? We receive anywhere from perfect, fantastic tifs to very poor ones. What distinguishes the two is a matter of mainly 3 factors:
1)Resolution - This is simple, we need a minimun 200 ppi for the giclee size desired.
2)Information - Here it gets a little tricky. The best tool to see if your image has a complete tonal range is to run a histogram (in Photoshop) to check if there is any information missing in the highlights and shadows. The hystogram can also tell you if the image is too flat by representing empty space at the right and left of it. This is easy to correct by running levels and putting the cursors next to where the information starts.
3)Color accuracy - is the color true to what you want represented in the giclee? Is the blue you see on your screen reading 0 0 160 or 0 30 160? In the case of the latter, the blue may look so in an uncalibrated monitor but it will print with a green component.
Finally, very important, do you have any color crossover? Although it is fairly rare these days, we still encounter it!