DPI for a CD only Wedding....

I am ready now to place a clients wedding images onto a CD. They require no album

just the whole day on CD. I was with the couple from dawn till dusk and have in the

region of 400 images for them. At the moment the 400 images are 800mb in total

and are at 72 DPI. Is that enough do you think for prints up to 9x6 ?, Do they need to

be higher?

What do you suggest?

Thanks for your time

Do they want to print and to what size? If it is for screen viewing then 8X12" @72DPI should be enough. For prints a bare minimum of 200DPI at the given print size is needed for quality prints.

 

Saying that the files are at 72DPI doesn't tell us anything, same thing as saying 'the box is red can I fit X in it'. In PS, go to 'image resize' uncheck the 'image resample' box and the type in 9X6 and see how much DPI the picture now contains. 250/300PPI is the target.

 

Assuming that you show the wedding with a digital camera of 6 megapixels or more you have plenty information in the file for a 12X8" file without uprezzing the picture. If they only want to see the picture on screen then that is horrible overkill, resize the pictures to 12X8" @ 72 DPI.

In general 72dpi is low res, wal-mart one hour, and the quality is good for 4x6 size images. 300dpi is average, but as Ben states it is about the megapixel. Don't fully understand why DPI can be changed, but I do know that 72 is too low res for anything other then 4x6.

72dpi is too low res for 4x6 if those are the dimesnions that the file is sized to. You need to properly size your files for printing and then set the dpi. For 9x6 (is this in inches?), you need about 2000x1300 pixel dimensions at 200dpi. If your file is big enough, then you just change the dpi without changing the pixel dimensions. If it isn't big enough, you need to up-res.

For customers with old Computers I provide one screen size resolution CD and a set of CDs with all the captured pixels I didn't crop away, if it was a big event. Otherwise they should fell free to downsize my stuff according to their needs.

DPI doesn't mean anything, without the "I" being defined.

 

You can have a 3000x2000 image at 100 DPI, that would make it a 30x20 print... or you could have the same 3000x2000 image at 500 DPI, which would make it a 6x4 print.

 

The 100DPI file isn't any better or worse than the 500DPI file, they are the same thing, only setup as a different number of inches.

 

If you meant you cropped to 9x6 at 72dpi, then you have very small files, and they are not likely to look good at all printed ::AT 9x6::, however they will probably be acceptable (not great) at 3x4.5 (144 DPI), and be what I would consider "good" prints at roughly 2.25x1.5 (making them 2 1/4" by 1 1/2" 300DPI prints).

 

From what I gather, you have 2MB per file (assume jpg?) on CD, which leads me to believe that they are uncropped photos at 72dpi (meaning the original resolution... not shrunk down), which means they will be fine for printing. From that I assume you essentially setup your roughly 3000x2000 picture at 72dpi (but it is still 3000x2000) and saved it. If this is a correct assumption, you have given them the full sized photo.

This is out of my league, but when I have my film from a shoot, scanned onto a CD, the lab does it at 8 mega-pixel files. They do enlarge quite nicely.

 

Russ

Jake V that is exactly what i got.. thanks every body

Actually, DPI has NOTHING to do with the size of the image. DPI is a printing term and refers to Dots Per Inch, or the number of droplets of ink per inch that are used to create an image on some kind of media.

 

What you're looking for is the number of PIXELS per inch in an image - or PPI. But the PPI alone is not enough. What you need is the total number of pixels per image.

 

For example.

An image that is 8x10 inches at 300ppi = 2400px by 3000px

Or an image that is 33.33x41.66 inches at 72ppi = 2400px by 3000px

 

So you see ... the ppi is irrelvant unless you know the dimensions of the image. THe two images above are the EXACT SAME in measurement and both will print an 8x10 or larger. The important numbers there are really the measurment of the pixels in the image - 2400px by 3000px. Or 7.2 million square pixels.

 

So if your shot with a Canon 20D (for example) at highest JPEG resolution, natively, right out of the camera, your images are:

 

2336px by 3504px ~or~

48.66 x 32.44 inches at 72ppi ~or~

11.6 x 7.7 inches at 300ppi ~or~

14.0 x 9.3 inches at 250ppi

 

And so on.

 

Karen

I'd give them maximum resolution JPEGs saved at 100% quality. If the person wants larger good quality prints than those JPEGs can provide at the resolution provided, I'd suggest a couple of pro labs that can resample the files for good quality larger prints.

 

For folks with humble expectations, such as those who use Fuji Aladdin and Kodak DIY kiosks (heck, *I* use those kiosks for quickie prints), they can make good prints of any size the machines are capable of generating even from my 3.3 mp P&S digicam. I don't know whether these kiosk interfaces interpolate or make adjustments other than those we instruct them to make, but so far my 8x10 (or thereabouts) prints from max rez JPEGs straight off the media card have looked really good.