Art Guidelines
For the Carolina Prize and County Lines

All About High-Quality Images

the baseline technical requirements for consideration

When submitting artwork either for competition during the submissions window for the Carolina Prize (mid-January to mid-March) or during the County Lines: A Literary Journal general submissions window (mid-March to mid-August), we accept or reject artwork based on the quality of the work itself, but also based on an image's fitness for publication from a technical perspective.

The Guidelines, the short-and-sweet version

• jpeg-formatted (.jpg) images of at least about 1800 x 2700 pixels (width x height)

• … that look good as both color images and as grayscaled images
  (Note: images with a higher contrast tend to do better when converted from color to grayscale.)

The Guidelines, in detail

The Carolina Prize is a cover art competition

The winner of the Carolina Prize art competition will be used as the cover for the next issue of County Lines. The cover is approximately 6 x 9 inches (width x height, portrait). Therefore, the ideal image you send us will need to be roughly 1800 x 2700 pixels or larger. Give or take. That's the equivalent of a 300 dpi image at 6 x 9 inches. If you overshoot, that is just fine. If you undershoot, depending on the nature of the image, the quality will be impacted, and it's less likely we can use it.

The winner of the Carolina Prize will grace the cover of the next issue of the journal. Honorable mentions may be selected to be included as interior artwork. In that case, they will converted to grayscale. Images with a higher contrast tend to present better on the page in grayscale.

County Lines art submissions (during open submissions) are only for interior art

The guidelines remain the same, but again, if the image does not render well in grayscale, it is unlikely to be accepted. If you are able, consider converting the image to grayscale before sending it to us.

So, how do I achieve (or surpass) the minimum recommendation?

If creating or manipulating the work in GIMP, Photoshop, Inkscape, or Illustrator:

• Save the original work in the application's native format: .xcf, .psd, .svg, or .ai respectively.
  (That's your "source file" or your "working copy." You don't send us this.)

• Export the work to a .jpg image at our suggested 1800 x 2700 pixels in size or larger. If you send a somewhat larger image, it gives us more flexibility. (Set the image to 300 dpi as well, though this is less relevant.)

• If your work is not a perfect book-cover-shaped object, never fear; just send us an image that is roughly that size or larger. Exporting the image where its shortest side is at least 3000 pixels is a simple rule-of-thumb that should produce good results.

If photographing the work with your phone camera:

• Ensure your lighting is as perfect as possible.

• Ensure your phone camera settings are set to generate a "high-quality" image.
  In your phone's camera settings, do this …

  • Android: set the Camera photo resolution to "Full resolution." What this means is that the photo taken will be of the highest quality your camera can muster. (Certain brands of Android-based phones may set this differently.)

  • iPhone: set the Camera > Format > Photo Mode to a megapixel (MP) setting of something larger than 12MP.

Good Luck!