Clip Art Angst

[Karen Brattain]

Does anyone know much about clip art?

I told a friend I would ask on her behalf. She is self-publishing a book that she has designed using Microsoft Word (yeah, I know). In this book she has used many clip art images. Now she’s discovered what I’m sure you designers have guessed already: she needs 300 dpi for printing, but her clip art images are only 200 or 150 dpi.

Is there... anything she can do? I have researched and experimented and come up empty-handed. She wants art in her book (it’s a short textbook), and she spent a lot of time choosing clip art images. The book is nearing production; it’s at the point where she wants to be done with it.

Well, if you think of anything, I’d be much obliged if you let me know.

Second question: in my research, I found iStockphoto. Does anyone know about them? They do offer high res images.

Thanks.

[Karen Brattain]

Thank you, Cliff! I knew you'd have something! I will look into both these options. I think Adobe Illustrator might be a bit over her head, but this is good to know and maybe she can find someone to do this.

The vector tracing program sounds like it will be useful. I think most of her art is vector, with only a few complex images.

[Cliff N. Hansen]

Here's a link to the blog post where I describe the online tracing program: http://pdxpub.ning.com/profiles/blog/show?id=1973420%3ABlogPost%3A2162

[Cliff N. Hansen]

. If they aren't in vector form and are JPEGs are the like, if they are simple illustrations, she can try to either bring them into Adobe Illustrator and then trace them, or if she doesn't have that, I put a link to a vector tracing program a couple days ago, she could try converting with that. If the pictures are photos or are really complex, I'd say she needs to find new ones and be thankful she talked to you about it before the pictures came out all nasty on the page.