GIF/JPEG

GIF and JPEG are formats designed to produce images for screen display (usually for the web), and as such are not normally of high enough quality for print reproduction. However, files will be accepted if they conform to the requirements given below.

1 - General guidelines

When creating your original image, following these guidelines will make it easier to produce useable GIF/JPEG files:

• Illustrations should conform to the RSC's 'Guidelines for Illustrations'.
• When adding symbols to your image, avoid using unusual fonts - try where possible to use only Arial, Helvetica and Symbol.
• Save each scheme, figure, chart or uncaptioned diagram as a separate file.   

Links:

2 - Software settings

These settings should be applied when creating your GIF/JPEG file:

• Use a resolution of 600 dpi (dots per inch).*
• End the electronic file name with ".gif" or ".jpg", as appropriate.
• Once you have saved your GIF or JPEG image, please reopen and print it out, to check that the image appears to be of acceptable quality.   

* If either the image size or resolution are fixed at inappropriate values by your software, you can try to work around this by proportionately varying the other. For example, if your software will only save at 72 dpi, create your image eight times as big as you want it to appear in the journal.