General PR Tip #6: Pictures are good, just ask before sending

A dirty little secret of the publishing world - everyone loves pictures.

Pictures of your products. Good screen snapshots of your products in action (if software). And pictures of real-world customers using your products.

Every month before deadline, editors and art directors go mad looking for illustrations above and beyond the stock pictures on a royalty-free CD of artwork. 

When you send out a press release, mention you have artwork available.

ALWAYS, ALWAYS take pictures of new products, key personnel (the "C" level, founders), and headquarters building(s) and have them tucked away, rather than scramble at the last minute to get them taken.

HIGH-Quality pictures, that is. Some people think that a 37Kbps .JPG that looks marvy on a website can be taken and dropped into a 1200 or 2400 (DPI) dots per inch printing process and look good. It doesn't work that way.

Print publications prefer "camera ready" artwork. These days that translates to a picture taken with a 2 megapixel (MP) or greater camera on the "fat" (i.e. no compression) setting. 

Don't try to save a couple of bytes by using higher compression, just suck it up and take pictures that will be anywhere from 1-4 MB files (or higher). If you want smaller files for quick loading on a web page, you can cut 'em later. It's easier to thin them out later for website use.

My personal prejudice of the moment is NOT to have pictures directly mailed to me. Since they're big, they take time to download. If I'm on a laptop in a hotel trying to download a gob of e-mail (do I have to define gob here?), sucking down that those three to four pictures times 3-4 MB is going to make me scream curses.

Other editors/writers may prefer you e-mail them artwork directly. But ask before e-mailing, just to be safe.

Another good idea is to setup an archive of pictures in the "Press" section of your website. I know some people get all paranoid creepy about throwing up pictures of their products for just ANYONE to download, but c'mon, how many people are running around with camera phones and digital cameras at trade shows these days? It's not a matter of trade secrets, it's a matter of convenience for someone who might want to use pictures of YOUR products in THEIR magazine which equals FREE EXPOSURE.

Summary

Always have "camera ready" artwork ready to go.

Always let people know you have camera-ready artwork available.

Camera-ready means a high-quality (2MP or higher) .JPG; Adobe .TIFF is sometimes preferred.

Please don't assume -- ask if it's OK to send pictures (since they'll likely be a couple of MB) beforehand

Having a set of photos "on line" (i.e. the website) for the press to use is a good idea.