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I am doing this booklet for some chairs and I have a problem. The problem is that I have small images, but the booklet is intended for A4 print. I will post 2 images to explain my problem.

What I would like to do: enter image description here

But I can't do this, as to do this I have to enlarge the image and it would look bad when I print it...

What I can do with the image at it's actual size without enlarging it: enter image description here

Do you have any suggestions on how to crop the image at its actual size so that it looks better without modifying the crop area ?

The idea is that the crop area is aligned with the copy on the right hand side. It starts at the top of the page to align with the title, and it ends at the end of the description text(the text in the column under the title).

Any suggestions are welcome ! (getting a larger image is the only solution, of course, but sadly there is no larger image)

What would you do ?

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  • You can download the InDesign file here if you want to : flavius.clickgarden.net/test.zip Sep 16, 2011 at 11:24
  • do you or the client own a camera? It's a bit mind boggling that a company selling a product hasn't invested in decent photos of said product.
    – DA01
    Sep 16, 2011 at 13:53
  • @DA01 I thought of that but the company I am designing the booklet for doesn't actually have the products in stock, they are ordering them from the manufacturers/producers when someone wants to buy it... they are usually quite expensive(1000 euro+) and there are about 40 of these chairs... so there is no way to photograph them untill they actually have one of them in stock, and in order to get them in stock someone needs to see the booklet, decide on buying and then I can photograph it :) the sad thing is that the producers don't offer high quality photos of them... Sep 16, 2011 at 14:20

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This is a little confusing - it sounds like you're asking if there's a way to scale this image to match the cropping you want to perform in the first image. As you've already stated, you can't do this unless you have a larger image. My suggestions would either be:

a) Find / create a larger image. If you're performing this for the manufacturer's sake they must either have larger images or a chair that can be re-photographed.
b) Use the existing uncropped image (the one you show in the second example) and replace the background with something that's not white. Alternately, you could completely remove the background (you'll have to give it some kind of border since you're not showing the whole chair and it would look funny with the edges of the chair just lopped off and hanging in space). Possibly that same red line you've used already?

It's a neat looking layout; good luck.

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This is a situation I'm all too familiar with. I do a lot of work in the entertainment field, and the concept of "high resolution image" seems to be beyond many artists' managements. My approach here, if a higher-resolution image was simply unobtainable, would be to start with the crop I wanted at the minimum resolution I could get away with (1.5 x lpi screen frequency for offset, 150 ppi for inkjet or laser reproduction).

Once I had that, I'd continue below (or above) the hero image with square or rectangular blocks very tightly cropped to show only the texture of the covering. Ideally, these should be the same height as your headline caps or an exact fraction (1/2, 1/3). I'd use row(s) of two or three small blocks in a grid to fill out the dimension you need. Grid spacing should be the same as the stroke weight of your headline type. (So should your red stripe, by the way. It looks subtly overweight at the moment.)

If you're careful with the spacing and proportions it will fit right in with your beautifully geometric layout and look like you intended to do it that way all along.

For super-sophistication, I'd probably experiment with simply repeating a portion of the main image, but broken up into a grid so it looks like you're highlighting details.

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  • i think i got it! thank's! and thanks for the tip about the red stripe, it looks much better now :) Sep 19, 2011 at 0:29

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