I'm an illustrator working in traditional media (you know, old fashioned paint, paper that sort of thing) I'm just starting out in computer illustration, can anybody advise me about the kind of resolution you should work at for high quality printed illustration?

Work in as high a resolution as you posibly can with out your computer catching fire ;) Really though if you want to print you need to work over 300 dpi for professional looking prints. If your system can handle it work higher than that... as high as possible. Then if you ever want to post any of those images to the internet make a copy and drop the res to 72 dpi.

Thanks for the help, I've only got an imac 400 so I doubt that I'll be able to work very big! I suppose I'll have to get something a little beefier if I get serious about this! Sigh, more expense. Atrice

Attached Link: http://www.weirdass.net

The standard is device and line screen dependent. In other words- if art prints at 150 lines per inch -300dots per inch. 200lpi -400dpi etc. In the case of bitmap files, find out the resolution of the imagesetter- 1270 is a good bet for most printers. The cover of Time Magazine is 180 LPI, so use that as your rubrick. Most everything you're going to be encountering as a beginner will be printing (low) 85-100 LPI and (high) 150-170 LPi so 300 dpi is a good safe res to work at. Mitch

Thanks a lot weirdass, just hope my mac can cope!

my very modest system is currently working on a 600 ppi document, currently going almost 500 megs, so your mac can handle it no prob. Imacs I find very reliable. ry

Thanks Slynky, thats encouraging, I've just upgraded to 320mb but haven't tried working on any big documents yet. I'll have to give it a try.