Photo standards for the Bugle

One of my goals this fiscal year, which began July 1, is to upgrade our newspaper’s photography.

The old adage is, “A picture is worth a thousand words.” And well-composed, high resolution photos are worth their added weight in gold.

With that in mind, I asked our Bugle page designer to come up with some standards for people submitting photos for the newspaper. Here are our guidelines:

• We prefer photos to be in jpeg or tiff format. However, if all that is available is a png or PDF, we can work with that.

• Photo size: Photos should be 300 ppi or at least large enough in size so that it has an effective ppi of at least 300. For example, if “Photo A” is provided at 19” wide x 26” high with a ppi of 72; this will end up at a size of 4.6” wide x 6” high when the resolution is changed to 300. Photo “A” will work at either a 1 or 2 column placement (but not any larger). If “Photo B” is provided at 2.2” wide x 3” high with a ppi of 96 This will end up at a size of 0.7” wide x 1” high when the resolution is changed to 300. “Photo B” will be too small for even a 1 column placement without running the risk of looking pixellated and/or blurry.

• Basically, the larger the photo, the better!

• Often we need to crop photos, either in the width, depth or both. When taking a photograph, try to keep the main subject as centered as possible.

• Do not compress photos before sending. If a photo is too large to send attached to an email, contact us at editor@parkbugle.org and we’ll work out a way for you to get the photo to us.

In the coming months, we will routinely publicize our photo standards. Thanks to all who contribute photos either occasionally or regularly to the Bugle.