Digital Figure Guidelines
These Digital Figure Guidelines are also available in the JCR Instructions For Authors.
Digital Files Allowed for JCR Submissions:
- TIFF (.tif)
- EPS (.eps)
- PDF (.pdf)
- JPEG (.jpg)
**All figures must be uploaded as separate files (that is, not embedded in a text, Word, or Excel file). Note about file resolutions: Many of the above formats are resolution-dependent. The file resolutions that are required for good quality printing is much higher than is required for viewing on a computer screen. Files that are created in programs or at settings that are "low" resolution will always retain the visual characteristics of low-resolution files regardless of what is done to them later. A low-resolution file has a bitmapped (pixilated) appearance. The best file resolution for a figure file depends on the type of figure that it is and what line-screen will be used to print the figure. Using resolutions that are higher than ideal does not serve any advantage. The following optimal and minimum resolutions are recommended for figure files:
Type of Figure | Optimal Resolution | Minimum Resolution |
B/W Line Drawing |
1200 ppi | 600 ppi |
Color | 600 ppi | 300 ppi |
Color/Line Drawing Combination |
600 ppi | 300 ppi |
Halftone | 600 ppi | 300 ppi |
Color/Halftone Combination (with text) |
600 ppi | 300 ppi |
Note about time: Digital files that require excessive time to open will be rejected. To prevent this from happening, please:
- Crop excessive white space from around the figure.
- Submit files in grayscale or bitmap mode unless they are intended to print in color.
- Size the figure to be close to its final print size.
- Do not exceed the optimal resolution for the kind of figure as indicated in the above table.
Commonly submitted figure files that are not allowed for JCR Submissions:
- MS Word (.doc, .docx)
- GIFF (.gif)
- Harvard Graphics
- WordPerfect
- Rich Text Format (.rtf)
- Cricket Graph
- Excel (.xls)
- .pic or .pcx
- Sigma Plot
- PowerPoint (.ppt)
- Metafiles
- JNB
- Adobe Illustrator (.ai)
- Canvas
- Adobe Photoshop (.psd)
- Quark Documents
- Corel Photo-Paint
- Corel Draw
- PageMaker Documents
- PictureViewer Documents