[Scribus] quality images for press (digital camera? cheap/free online stock s? scan?)

[Tariq Rashid]

hi, i am finding it hard to locate images i can use for press.

at this stage i'm only looking for "abstract" or "texture" images which i
can use as part of a background layer, most likely gradiated in
transparency. images of skies, city scapes, tall glass buildings, water,
patterns in nature, etc etc .. 

the problem i have is that most images that i can use royalty free are not
detailed enough to be printed at the recommnended 300dpi (glossy brochure).

stock image libraries that i have come across are too expensive for images
at that resolution.

my local photography shop (run by photography and optics enthusiasts) insist
that i don't need a digitial camera with more than 2MP - i don't believe
them! surely, the higher the pixels you can capture the more you can crop
and play with the image before it becomes unusable - cropping an already
small image will leave you with even less pixels obviously).

some have advised that i use an analogue camera and scan the developed
photos?


can anyone advise on any of this? is a 5MP camera enough? can anyone
recommended one that has a good end-to-end system (lens and processor, not
just CCD). 

or perhaps someone knows of a cheap/free online resource of high quality
images?

one option which is a bit crafty is to use low resolution images and then
blow them up and apply various artistic filters to hide the fact that they
were originally of low resolution - even tracing it to a vector format.

t