Artwork guidelines

Here are some important things to know when producing or purchasing media for OLF.

• We need to know what fonts were used to produce the work. If someone else did the work ask them for a list of the fonts used. Even if you have the source image files your system might not have the proper fonts installed. This means you cannot change the text without having to change the font as well if you cannot dig up the exact same font face for free online.

• SVG is the best source image format. SVG is an open format image file. Data is stored as vectors instead of pixels so the content can be scaled up or down with no quality loss. This is not the case with pixel based formats like png, jpg, tiff, gif, or psd.

• PSD files are propiertary with no good open source support. Photoshop can export all the layers in psd file to separate png files. This is a much better solution than trying to work on psd files with gimp or krita. You cannot embed fonts in a PSD file.

Formats to avoid

• jpg/jpeg - Is a lossy format and it does not keep any layer information.
• pdf - Is a format designed for print and it is great for print. It is not a good editing or as an online format. We can always convert something to PDF as needed but not the other way around.

Software

• inkscape opens svg files for editing natively
• gimp can import svg files for compositing to make a final product like a flyer. GIMP also allows you to set the dpi independent of the image resolution.