In article <3A33977D.A5DBD833@videotron.ca> , Francois Labreque 
<fla### [at] videotronca>  wrote:

> Since this is for a CD-R project, I don't need 2880dpi Linotronic
> printer resolution, but I'm wondering what's a good resolution for B&W
> laser-printer quality images?

It depends on your printer.  I would suggest a fraction of the actual
printer resolution and smallest point size, i.e. for a 600 dpi printer more
than 150 dpi will waste the printer's memory and take longer to print (if it
prints at all).  This assumes you are using the printer (or its drivers)
halftone mode, of course.  If your printer supports only 300 dpi or the
printer memory is not sufficient to hold the whole image in 150 dpi
(unlikely, but still), even 100 dpi will give you a newspaper like
resolution.  If you have a printer that is advertised tooutput with 1200
dpi, a slightly higher resolution, maybe as high as 300 dpi for the image
might improve quality.

You should convert the image to grayscale before printing and you may have
to adjust it a bit to get it ligh/dark enough if you are using a
non-PostScript printer.  You will probably need an image editing program for
this.

So, as a CD cover is about 5" x 5" (a bit less, actually), your image should
be around 750 x 750 pixels.


    Thorsten


PS: If printing on a color laser printer, result may be better with twice
the image resolution, i.e. for the average 600 dpi color printer feeding it
an image witha resolution of 300 dpi may still increase the quality of the
image.  However, in order to print the color image, I strongly suggest to
make sure it looks well when converted to CMYK color space.

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