There was a time not long ago that color plates were an expensive addition to the cost of printing a book. Family histories and memoirs produced in past decades often seem text-heavy and dull compared to modern publications. We encourage authors to fill their books with images and color. Cost is no longer an obstacle, you will preserve many more precious photos, and most important, you will engage the readers of tomorrow, who live in a colorful, graphical world. Young people today expect their text to be illustrated, and grow easily bored with text alone.
There are two phases to preparing your photos and illustrations for a book. First, the images and artifacts must be scanned properly. Then the files are prepared in a photo editing program such as Photoshop. The quality of your image output can only be as good as the input. For example, images from internet websites are generally displayed at low resolutions, usually 72 dpi, making them unfit for reproduction in a book. Professional printers require files to be submitted at 300 dpi (dots per inch).
Investigate your scanner settings and scan photos, documents and artifacts at a minimum of 300 dpi. If the image will be scaled larger than the original, scan at 600 dpi, or even higher.
Generally, scanners and cameras transfer files in the .JPEG file format. This is a “lossy” format, meaning you will lose some of the image clarity each time you manipulate and save the image. To prevent this loss in quality, after scanning immediately open the file in Photoshop and save as a .PSD (Photoshop document), which is lossless format that will preserve your original safely.
Be sure to keep these original, unmodified scans for archival purposes. When you work with an image, rename it and save it as a working copy. This way, you never need to return to the scanner.
Photoshop is a complex, comprehensive, sometimes bewildering software program, and if you are just beginning to learn its many facets, it can take years to master. Truly, if you are a beginner, it would be far more efficient to get experienced help at this stage, especially if your photos are not in optimal condition. Your book should look professional, and it will benefit from the professional touch of a skilled photo editor.
If you are experienced with Photoshop, you know that the possibilities for photo editing are nearly infinite. We can offer this basic guidance, and point you to a few resources, and encourage you to make the best of each image for your book.
Consider the workflow. Straighten and crop photos before making any other changes. These basic composition choices will help you to decide which colors and elements you will retain and improve. Next, look at the “big picture” of color. What is the dominant color? Are you trying to coordinate this image with others? Using color filters can help you to achieve a consistent look throughout your book. For family histories, using an adjustment layer with a sepia photo filter can balance diverse photos. In the same way, consistent use of brightness, saturation, and simple hue adjustments can correct and balance your images.
One of the challenges of memoirs and family histories is that most of the photos are close-ups of people, and human flesh tones are the trickiest of colors to correct. An excellent resource for Photoshop tutorials dealing with this subject is http://vandelaydesign.com/blog/design/photoshop-touchup-tutorials/ . Every element of the human face and body is addressed. Perhaps you wish to whiten your subject’s teeth or airbrush away some adolescent acne. But watch out, because with too much Photoshopping, your own relatives won’t recognize you!
