300 or 600 dpi for Black and White Comics?

[KennethLopezJr921]

This is something I've been feeling pretty conflicted with ever since I thought about posting my series to tapas. Because while parts of my comic are in color, a majority of it will be in black and white. I've gotten various and conflicted answers to this like 600dpi and 300/350dpi. I've only 3 pages of my comic in 600 dpi and when I compress them, results look a bit....mixed

This is something that I'll need outside input on :/.

[DNoble]

Higher resolution is generally always better, but it also exponentially increases the demand on your computer. Black-and-white is typically done at a higher resolution because each pixel takes up much, MUCH less space and therefore can be altered by the computer more quickly. Work at the highest resolution your hardware can comfortably handle.
The compression issues you're running into are likely a result of you being used to working at a lower resolution, so when you try to use the same tools, textures, and line quality on a higher resolution, it doesn't look right. You'll just have to experiment with a bigger pen, possibly new brushes, and keeping yourself a little further zoomed out in order to get used to working on higher DPI canvases.
200 is the bare minimum necessary to print an image on paper and have the pixels not be all that noticeable.
300 is the resolution necessary to print an image on paper and have the pixels not be visible at all.
600 is standard for most printed stuff, and both gives slightly finer control as well as making 100% sure tiny little flubs and errors don't show as well.
Some black and white stuff goes as high as 1200 DPI, though I've never really seen a need for that.

I work at 450 a lot for full color illustrations; nice middle ground between higher levels of detail and not melting my motherboard.

[Kaydreamer]

For black and white, if you intend to print it, 600dpi is recommended to ensure the lines print at the sharpest quality possible. (Coloured comics can get away with 300dpi.)

If you only want to post it online though, the dpi doesn't matter. Generally, just work at double the pixel resolution you'll be posting at, and everything should look crisp.

[allenT]

If your PC can't handle 600dpi, keeping at 300dpi has it's perks: less ram required also save disk space.
When you want to make prints you can resize all pages using free online AI scaling like waifu2x (it works so well i'm shocked).

[afuji]

Tones will look kinda wonky when sizing them for web at a lower dpi. (that patchy pattern you can kinda see) Generally I would suggest work at 300dpi if you're considering making it for print in the future. If you're making huge color prints, maybe consider 600 dpi. Making the lineart in vector might also help with smooth lines at different dpi settings.

This is a separate thing, but you might want to adjust the borders between the panels so there's a bit more space (since it was resized? it seems a bit tight as it is now)

Just curious, but what program do you use to make the comic?

Here's an older thread where the author had the same question.

I like doing as high as my computer will let me go so I can make panels into large prints later for art shows, or all-over tees, or etc that needs a big file size. That said, I work in a place we print art and 300 has always been just fine for standard sizes. If you can only handle 300, you should still be fine. If your exact goal is a publisher or client that demands a higher resolution, it may be worth making a business investment in a stronger computer or more RAM if the gig is that impo…

[allenT]

@KennethLopezJr921
Are you using Photoshop to do screentones?
If so I may able to help you solve the 'moire' problem because i develop & work my screentones on old PS too. I think all versions have same 'Color Halftone' function.

[KennethLopezJr921]

As a matter of fact I do! It's actually brush preset that comes with other special effect brushes

[KennethLopezJr921]

I use the latest version of Adobe Photoshop. I've been using it since 2019 and began using it to draw my comic earlier this year

[KennethLopezJr921]

The compression issues you're running into are likely a result of you being used to working at a lower resolution, so when you try to use the same tools, textures, and line quality on a higher resolution, it doesn't look right.

You're absolutely spot on with that statement. Up until recently, all of my digital drawings were done in 300dpi image resolution, mostly because it was the default setting in Photoshop and it was what I was used to. I only began drawing in 600 when I noticed that the lines made by the brush I was using didn't look super pixelated and that screen tones didn't look super big as as opposed to 300 res. 600 is a big leap in image quality and allows for more detailed drawings. Except said would be mushed when compressing it.

[KennethLopezJr921]

As a matter of fact I do! It's actually brush preset that comes with other special effect brushes
^
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Accidently posted this as comment instead of reply

[allenT]

In my case, I don't use the special effect brushes, i turn 'flats' layers into screentones by using 'color halftone' effect. But this is how i tackle the screentone 'moire' effects.

What i do is in 'Color Halftone' effect, I set all channels #1~4 to 33. This is my tried-and-true formula . I think there's other screentone angle that also works but from 0~40, 33 is the most consistent, i also think it looked natural for my comic. In some cases when i use a size '5' i use angle '36', other than that all uses angle '33'.

Unless i want a robotic shading feel i may use 0, 45, 90, 135, 180 (and keep the dot size larger than normal to reduce the chance of moire).

Here's 2 picture sample, 1st one are screentones set at '0' angle, another one '33'. you can download them and inspect them in different zooms. Moires are greatly reduced in most case in the 2nd pic.

Overlapping screentones i keep them the same dot size to minimize moire (still have some in certain zoom but much less severe) My own rule is never use 3 or more screentone overlaps because it increase moire severity even when value at angle 33.

[thecrystalrook]

300 minimum is what you should work with if you're printing. That's the smallest you can go to go from digital to analog and construct the data. From my point of view, you should work in at least twice the resolution you intend to print with. This is grounded in Nyquist Sampling (I can elaborate further on what this is if you'd like). I do work in 600 myself, but I worked with traditional art so I want to make sure I get the most out of my image. But I downsize down to 300 when I actually print, and down to 100 when I post on Tapas.

If you're concerned about computer performance, higher resolutions will demand more processing power. Particularly in RAM and CPU.

[KennethLopezJr921]

Imma try this. Thanks man!

[KennethLopezJr921]

Posting so this doesnt die

[rajillustration]

When you compress screentone that is very small, it will compress like this. Especially since a lot of people have devices of different sizes, you don't have control over whether or not the screen tone will get compressed and how much unless they're looking at it on browser (especially on WT where I don't think you can zoom).

So, I personally think that if your intention is digital, that the problem isn't so much the DPI but the size of your screentone. DPI is more about printing and brush size, which I'm assuming you aren't talking about here.

This took me a while to figure out because there's this myth that all digital files must be 72 dpi for web viewing, and that was what I was taught in college, so I'd always want to account for a loss of DPI with tricky math. But, in reality all files saved for digital are saved in a pixel size. Once you do that, they do not use their DPI information anymore and will output the image at the most optimal way for their digital device--meaning they both look exactly the same on browser and phone, whether you have a 72 dpi image or a 600 dpi image. That's kind of how the computer does it. One will be a massive file size vs the other, but they will be the same width, height, and fidelity unless your dpi gets much smaller than 72.

When our screentone gets effed up in compression from going from print to web viewing--no matter the DPI--it's because the compressor does not know that's screentone. It won't replicate dots. It's making the rough estimate of the square of information that was there before, which will be shades of gray. And because it usually does this in square chunks, that's why digital compression has like...squares to it. There are ways to adjust the interpolation (which is what this process is called) with pull down menus. It's more of a bigger deal with color than black and white (I usually don't care about moire that much, I honestly don't) but you can read up on it here: https://www.dummies.com/software/adobe/photoshop/how-to-resample-images-in-photoshop-cs6/ It may be that switching your interpolation to bicubic or bilinear will help it look better.

So a few things I've learned, after doing a Black and White project with screentone a year back and making a lot of experiments as I went along, and especially after looking at my screentone on the phone where my pages are smaller:

1. If the screentone is very very small, just make it gray. The phone will make it gray, so just make it gray.
2. If the screentone has a gradient to it, it will have less impression of moire and compression (moire will still exist, but it won't be as jarring)
3. If the screentone is very dark, it's better at being read as screentone, vs when it's light, when it will usually just fade in the bg, and if it were on a phone, may as well just be gray.
4. bigger screentone is less likely to do moire than smaller screentone, but will compete with your image so I had to make them less than 100% black (which is fine, because my piece only had screentone for the vibes and not black and white printing dreams).
5. Screentone textures that have a randomized effect are better at hiding the compression of moire than patterned screens.
6. You compress your file in photoshop, and then WT and Tapas will compress it again for uploading (especially if you upload Jpeg. Jpeg tends to work better for some places, but WT and Tapas will compress the hell out of your Jpegs, so using png help avoid some of the nastier compression, but WT in particular sucks at doing any sort of gradient and will chew it the hell up on the phone.)

And like, this will compress again when I upload them here onto this forum because it'll be shrunk to the width of 386, so I'll have a link below each to see it at the intended size, but I found that having my screentones bigger kept it from moire even if I overlapped them

https://tapas.io/episode/1572036

and how choosing screentones with a toothy or randomized feel to them alleviates the compression.

https://tapas.io/episode/1650933

But in the end, digital screentone has a little moire in it unless it's quite big, so it's OK if it's there. The biggest thing is that it's legible or not and not too distracting. And, all of these pages in the beginning were saved at 72 DPI and drawn in 300 DPI, so it really didn't matter, because youknow...it's for web, it's not print.

[KennethLopezJr921]

Okay so Im suprised this thread hasnt been locked yet so Imma bump it to see if anyone was in the same jam I was or if they want to throw in their two sense