300 dpi

300 dpi - 300 dots per inch; the minimum resolution limits for a publishable figure according to my publisher.  The problem is that you can find a great many illustrations and images that look just great on a computer screen but are about 75-95 dpi, one-third the required resolution.  To increase the resolution you can reduce the size, and suddenly a decent sized image gets really tiny.  And when you're looking for very particular botanical images it gets much harder.  Not just everyone happens to have an image of a hornwort with sporophytes laying around. And if they do have a good image, one rarely used, why they very reasonably think that it's use can command a pretty good price, which works out very well for both of us except the entire illustration budget for TPP's book is zilch.  That's right, zilch, so without the remarkable generosity of colleagues and people who post great images on the Creative Commons, us publishing paupers would be toast.  Got a good image of Takakia or Tmesipteris, let TPP know.  TPP would mention the program used to generate these images and plates for publication, but it might be mistaken for an endorsement.  While a very amazing program in terms of quality of the results, it is without question the most non-intuitive computer program TPP has ever used, and he's used a lot of them. 

Don't ever do this

Books are big complex things, the more so because smaller presses require the author to basically do everything.  Three parts all have to agree with each other: the text, the figures, and the figure captions.  For a variety of reasons, but mostly because of resolution, and too little of it, TPP finds himself redoing a lot of figures, but along the way not everthing works out just exactly the same.  You find a better image over here.  You don't want to pay a publisher to use an image over there, so you have to get a replacement to avoid plagiarism.  A colleague helps you out with an image, a terrific image, one that you have to use even though it means modifying a plate, again.  And worst, as a result you think of a better way to present things, and this requires you to shuffle a couple of other items to make this work. You make this one little change in all of this and it's like knocking over one domino in a long row or a large network of dominos.  Something like 32 individual images or illustrations were arranged into 16 plates, and when you get done you've got something like 31 individual images and illustrations arranged into 13 plates, so now the chapter text and figure captions have to be updated, corrected, jiggered around, the figures renumbered and reorganized to make everything come out even again.  It took all day, and TPP is exhausted.  Only one more chapter to go, plus all the tough items that were passed over along the way.  And the appendices, all the appendices, containing another 62 figures!