Up-Rezing for Printing

[jlipkin@ramapo.edu]

I'm writing a book which is currently on press in China. While the publisher is doing all of the design and pre-production work, I have been doing all the image research. That is, I have been contacting the artists in the book, and gathering the images. I just got an email from the publisher saying that one of the images I sent them is too low-resolution to use.

The printer is requesting files at 350ppi, and this image would need to be about 300% bigger. I emailed the artist, who sent me a new image. But it appears he simply up-rezed the image instead of re-rendering the image (It's of a virtual model created in 3D Studio Max). I tried up-rezing the image in PS using Bicubic Smoother and got an image which looks pretty similar to his.

If I were to do some sharpening using PhotoKit, would this improve the image once it's been printed? I've been a bit reluctant to do any sharpening or color management, as I'm assuming that the publisher has their own workflow (they're a large, reputable art book publisher).

So my question is, should I:

1. Simply send along the image
2. Attempt to do some sort of up-rezing on the original, low-res image, then some sort of sharpening


thanks

[Ashley Karyl]

Ideally I'd try to get a new image at a higher resolution without interpolation. Sharpening may help in some ways but this is impossible to advise really without seeing the files in all honesty.