Ad Layout Introduction Put it in writing The layout sheet Indicating copy and art The copy sheet Keying copy Keying art Other things about art Digital artwork How art scales The model release form Proofs Managing proofs Credits and adjustments More on adjustments The fastest way to increase sales! Participate in this award-winning, newspaper-specific ad sales course on-site or in a Webinar.  • Get past upfront stalls and objections without any pushing  • Make the account believe he really needs you  • Get better information from your prosepct  • Develop quick ad strategies that work the very first time  • Eliminate size, frequency, content, cost and most other objections before they ever arise  • Get dramatic responses for all kinds of advertisers  • Never have to push an advertiser to run again click here

Accepting a completed ad in digital form can be a very tricky business since the advertiser must create the ad in a compatible application, use the right fonts and image formats, and convert everything properly to PDF format.

You'll learn more in-depth information about accepting digital ads from your advertisers in the next chapter on rate cards, but here are some quick guidelines about accepting digital artwork.

You'll want your advertisers to give you their artwork on either a CD-ROM or a Zip disk, either formatted for a Mac or PC, since that's most likely what your production department can read.

Alternatively, they may e-mail the files to you or, at some publications, upload them to a secure area of your Web site via FTP (file transfer protocol). You can ask your manager more about these options.

Adobe Photoshop is widely used by production departments, which, among other things, will allow almost any image to be converted to the department's preferred format. Because of this, they'll probably accept digital images in TIFF, JPG, PSD (Photoshop), PICT, and Illustrator EPS formats.

Again, if your advertiser is providing you with a completed ad, the guidelines are much more strict, since often once a customer provides a finished ad, it's impossible to translate incompatible image formats into good ones.

The most important thing to keep in mind with accepting digital images is resolution, which is usually determined by the line screen each publication uses. As mentioned on the previous page, every image in your publication is made up of tiny dots. If you counted how many lines of dots are in an inch, you'd have the "line screen" number. Thankfully, your publication will have that information in your rate card, and most likely between 75 lines per inch (for some newsprint) and 133 (for glossy magazines) lines per inch.

Whatever your line screen is, double it and that number will be the image resolution needed to make the image clear and free of any pixelization. For example, a newspaper with a line screen of 80 will need images with at least 160 ppi (pixels per inch). Just for comparison, anything displayed on a Web page is approximately 72 ppi, much too low for publication, even though it looks great on your screen. Your home photo inkjet printer, on the other hand, requires at least 200 ppi to make pixel-free prints.

Of course, this won't ensure your image reproduces well, but it's a good start for the production department, who may be able to tweak a less-than-perfect image's highlights, midtones, shadows, and even sharpness to make it work.

Next: How art scales