Photo Specs

You want the photos of your organization or event to be clear and sharp when we print them in our paper. To assure that your photos are printed at the highest quality, you need to send us good pictures. We can only work with what we get. Here's a checklist of specifications that your photos should meet.

1. Submission - Photos can be sent to us as digital photos or as hard copies to be scanned. We cannot accept photos that are printed from newspapers or magazines, because they will not result in good-quality images. Generally, we also cannot accept photos that you have printed on your inkjet printer. Although they might look good to you, when printed, they usually do not reproduce well in newspaper form.

2. Copyright - Please do not send us photos that have a copyright notice on the front or back of the photo, unless you can also give us written authorization from the owner of the copyright that we may reprint it.

3. No folding, staples or tape - Please do not bend or fold photos, or staple or tape them.

4. Color or black and white? - We can accept both color and black and white photos.

5. Size: Prints - We can take any size photo up to 8.5 x 11 inches. We will convert it to the proper size.

6. Size: Digital - We love digital photos, but please take care that they are of sufficient size and quality to be reproducible in print. Photos that have been sized for email are generally too low in resolution to be printed.

Please send us the original files from your camera. Please do not try to resize or alter the size of the image so that we make sure it is of the best quality and clarity for print.

Photos taken with a camera-phone are not sufficient for printing.

7. Digital Format - If you can send us digital photos, we'd prefer to have them in .jpg format. That is the typical format used by most digital cameras.

We cannot accept a photo that is embedded in another document - for instance, a photo in a Microsoft Word document or embedded in a PDF. Sometimes we can extract the photo, but generally that does not work well. Please send us the photos separately.

8. Quality - Please take care to make sure that your photos are properly focused, properly exposed and well composed. Try not to cut off someone's head or feet!

9. Markings - Photos should not have written markings of any kind. Please don't scratch out someone in the middle of a photo and expect us to be able to run it. Take care that impressions of any writing on the back of a photo do not show through to the front. Don't let ink from a photo on top transfer to a photo beneath it.

10. Returns - If you want your photos returned to you, please enclose a self-addressed stamped envelope and tell us you want them back. We make every effort to get your photos back to you if you want! We regret that we cannot return materials to you unless you include sufficient postage. (We are, after all, a free paper!)

If in doubt ... call and ask! We'll give you some tips on taking good photos.