Web Page Postcards

...screenshot, photo,or?

[glengara]

Just wondering what's the best way to go about getting postcards of a web page printed.
Anybody ever done this?

[edit_g]

You could do a screen capture, followed by a crop to your liking using something like Photoshop. You can easily change it to display horizontaly (so that it will fit well on a postcard) and you could perhaps leave the scrollbars in so that people can see that it is a website. Then save it as high quality as you can (as a PSD file or equivalent) and rush off down to the printer.

<added> I have done this - but I mocked the page up in Photoshop to make it all look perfect - one of my colleagues did a screengrab (I didn't think a screengrab would do it) and we ended up with exactly the same thing...</added>

[glengara]

Sounds promising Edit_g, I assumed a screenshot wouldn't cut it for a professional looking job.
Does the screen size make a qualitative difference on a screenshot?

[edit_g]

Does the screen size make a qualitative difference on a screenshot?

No, I don't think so. You'll be shrinking the image down anyhow to fit on the postcard - so I shouldn't think so.

But it does make sense to increase the screen size - i.e. if you can increase the screen size to fit the whole page on the screen then do this.

Otherwise just take the first screenshot with the scrollbar at the top of the page and then scroll down and take the next one (and so on). Put the first one as the top layer and paste the second one as a layer under the first one - then you should just be able to slide the bottom one up until they match up perfectly. You'll need to make the image pretty long - but you can crop away any whitespace later on.

Hope that helps.

[glengara]

Ta very much ;-)

[korkus2000]

I would recommend creating the site in your graphics program at a resolution for print. It will look better than the screen shot. The screen shot works, but it will not look as slick for a print run as a recreated graphic.

[glengara]

Korkus, the graphics available are low res gifs, still worth while creating the site IYO?

[korkus2000]

It all boils down to what is printing this thing. I am assuming you will be getting a large run off of a large plate printer. edit_g is right that a screen capture can work for any kind of small run digital prints you may get from Kinkos that will work with 300dpi.

edit_g how was yours printed?

You may also not be able to make your graphics good enough to matter anyway, but if this is a plate bound graphic I would try and recreate it.

Did the printer give you an LPI/DPI/PPI specification? Is it going to be halftone? It really does depend on the print process. Personally I would recreate it, but I also design websites at very high res just in case I need to reproduce it in print later.

[edit_g]

edit_g how was yours printed?

At <self snip> (little high-street chain of copy stores - the sort of shop you might go to get your thesis bound). We didn't need the highest quality prints to be fair - we needed them cheap, cheerful and quick and it was a small run (250). Turned out very nice though.

It comes down to what you are using them for and how much you're prepared to pay. If you can do it in Illustrator at a high dpi then you will find that your local little print shop probably can't handle it and if you do it in Photoshop at a normal print quality for a small run then they probably can. But if you can do it properly and invest some £'s into it - then I'd go for it.