DPI

While I never understood how to use this info about DPI (I know what it is I

suppose)so I was trying to understand this reading a book "Photoshop for

photographers". The book and the previous posts in this forum say something

like printer's DPI is 2000 dpi or whatever number. I tried to see the

specifications of my Epson R1800 printer so I could kind of read the book in

terms of my printer. This curiosity confused me further. The specifications of

my printer, according to Epson are an uglly looking 5760 x 1440 optimized dpi -

..not the beautiful,well rounded specifications like 10 tons DPI(10,000

DPI).or such one sweet little number like they promised in the book.

So what does this mean now? And can someone translate this please? Oops..No

no..I do not want to userstand this, just please help me with the following

question.

I would like to print my pictures using Epson R-1800. I use Canon 5D camera. I

like the prints to look as professional as possible.(given the constraints of

this equipment I have and my technique/knowledge). All my photographs are of

people..plain people - no art effects..no nature. I will be very thankful if

one of the experts here will give me some input about what my settings shoudl I

use to get the most professional looking prints using this equipment..I do not

care about disk space or cost etc etc..if these somehow come into play, since I

do my photography once in a while when my day job permits me, to relax and

connect with my younger years, so any cost I incur is minimal in a given year.

Given all this, alI wI ould like to know is at what settings I should shoot,

what resolution should I use for Adobe Photoshop editing (I use Atkins blowup

for any upsampling, when needed) and is there anything else with respct to the

print size (other than physical dimensions of the print) I should set. With

your help, I want to forget all the theory I read and never understtod,and

hopefully can enjoy my photography/photoshop and printing.

Thanks

Arun

Arun

for you (since your not scanning) DPI relates only to prints. Its dreadfully simple how many dots are produced in an inch.

a pixel is a dot.

so, if you have an image 3000 pixels across, and print it at 300DPI you'll have a print which is 10 inches wide.

simple

you say: "I want to forget all the theory I read and never understtod,and hopefully can enjoy my photography/photoshop and printing."

I suggest you don't print anyting, sell your printer and send image files to a shop for printing. They really are very competitive in price. Printing yourself isn't free and when you add in the price of the printer you'll have to make quite a few prints before you've broken even on the difference between the (slightly) cheaper prints you're making VS the slightly more expensive prints the shop makes for you.

Then you won't need to waste time on anything except enjoying the photography

Thanks Charles. Now I read your reply, Bob Atkin's post on this topic and http://www.steves-digicams.com/techcorner/January_2005.html, I seem to understand this. One good tip I got from the Steve Digicams , which I am adding here as others who have confusion like me may benefit, is:

"For Canon/HP printers that would be 300 PPI for typical photos or 600 PPI for optimal quality with the finest details.For Epson printers, 360 PPI for photo quality or 720 PPI for photo quality with the finest details possible. If you use a dye sub printer, always resample to the "native" resolution of the dye sub printer, 314 PPI, 320, 480, etc. Note that depending on how effective your print driver is at stretching (or shrinking) the image to fit on the paper, you may get better results if you always resample to a multiple of the printer resolution, even if you start with a higher resolution than needed."

I always resampled at 300.. I might as well do it at 360.

Thanks again.

Arun

<p>Printers/print drivers are supposed to be reasonably sophisticated at resampling your image if you happen to feed the printer an image at a resolution that isn't a good match for the printer's native resolution. But yes, you can help the printer out by picking the right resolution, so that it can turn each of your pixels into a dither pattern rather than having to resample the image first.</p>

<p>In practice, how much of a difference does it make? I suspect not a lot. It wouldn't be difficult to test, but I'm too lazy. If you want to test it, take the same full-resolution image, resample it to the same physical dimensions at two different resolutions (e.g. to make a 4x6" image, resample one copy to 1200x1800 at 300 ppi and the other copy to 1440x2160 at 360 ppi), print them using identical print settings, and see if you can tell the difference.</p>