Jupiter

[ffutures]

I'm trying to convey just how big Jupiter is - all my other planet pictures have been pretty small, this time I want something BIG. So I've put the image in the background of the first page covering the planet. Text isn't final yet, I may put in some facts and figures for Jupiter before diving into the moons, and remember this is a 1930s vision of Jupiter, not modern astronomy.

I'd be grateful if people could take a look (and possibly print it if they can spare the ink/toner) and tell me what they think. Does it print well? Or will it just be a nuisance?

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/forgottenfutures/temp/jupiter.pdf

About 71k

Comments

[dsample.livejournal.com]

It might be better if you lightened Jupiter up a bit. There isn't enough contrast between some of its darker regions and the text overlaying it. I think it will only get worse if it's printed.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

It's a difficult one to get right - on screen that looked fairly light but printed dark, to make it print light it has to be almost colourless on screen.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I've uploaded another version, lighter and hopefully a little better.

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

I dont know now whether I am looking at the lighter one or not. I was going to say roughly the same thing.

It is good that you have blurred the background image so that it doesnt have features which intefere with the text but it is still too bold colourwise.

If this is the only planet you are printing like this I wonder whether it is better to bleach it out even more...

[nelc.livejournal.com]

The red-orange bits aren't too bad (on-screen), but the grey areas are much too dark. Looking at the page in Photoshop, there are areas at about 40-50% grey at the darkest. I think you need to pull those back to about 20% at maximum, and I'd prefer 15%.

It will look washed out, there's nothing you can do about that, but you want people to be able to read the copy without distraction, so pushing the image back is what you have to do.

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Looks good when printed on a colour laser printer (HP Color LaserJet 2600n, to be precise).

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

In my view, there's never a good reason to put an irregular image behind text you want people to read, especially in a book.

It doesn't improve readability, and it isn't the kind of artwork that'll get someone to buy the book.