What dpi do you use for your Epson 8.5x11 prints?

[jimsimmons]

I print color on an Epson R200 and B&W on an Epson C84. Red River premium matte

or Epson Dual sided matte papers. I currently use 300 dpi files. I can't see

much difference between that and 240 dpi files, and I can't see much difference

with 360 dpi files either. So I'm just curious as to what dpi settings other

folks are using and why.

[chwn]

I understand from Epson that 360 dpi is best. How much different that is from 240 dpi on a

small print is not clear.

[bobmichaels]

I send the printer whatever I have. As I use a film scanner, I try to save a file at whatever resolution gives me somewhere in the 300-400 range at my max print size. Typically I scan 35mm at 4800 dpi but save the TIF with 50% size reduction or 2400 ppi. 6x7 negs are scanned at 3200 ppi but usually saved as 1600 ppi. As I almost always print 35mm as 6.7x10" and 6x7 as 10x11.7", that seems to hit the sweet spot.

 

I have never been able to see any difference in prints from what size file I send to the printer so long as it's around 300 ppi or larger.

 

I do believe that all Epson desktop printers internally resize to 720 ppi before printing but it does that so well that there is no need sending a 720 ppi file to the printer. The Epson print driver does this very well.

 

I've concluded that final print quality is determined much more by lens quality and camera steadiness than anything one does in post processing (within reason) or printing.

[brettjohnson]

Hopw this helps you all a little.

 

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1003&message=4761338

[scott_eaton]

At 200dpi I can't see much difference in my Epson matte prints compared to more dpi, unless I'm printing to glossy, which I rarely do.

 

240 should be fine.

 

Dumping bigger files only results in drastically more waiting and more time to spool.

[roger_smith4]

I use 300 as a standard for my Frontier prints and do B&W with an Epson R220 and MIS inks on matte papers. I tried printing at 360DPI for the Epson, but I'm not convinced it looks any better, and I like to be able to print both glossy Frontier and matte Epson from the same file and see which one I like better.

[fanta]

Jim, do you mean that you re-sample your image to a specific resolution before printing? I don't: I just edit and save the image at the highest resolution available with my digital camera or film scanner, then print the file without any re-sampling. I assume the printer driver will take care of resolution as needed. I am using an R800.

[brettjohnson]

The reason that most people are stating that printing beyond 300ppi (not dpi)is provides not significant benefit is that most human eyes can only resolve to about 250 ppi. Some can tell the difference above this but not many. So why make you printer do more than is needed, it takes longer to print and consumes more ink.

 

ppi is pixels per inch. This is how many actual pixels from the image will be printed per inch on the paper. dpi is how many drops of ink the printer will put on the paper per inch. therefore one pixel may be made up of several drops of ink.

 

An image of say 3000 x 2000 pixels will give you a print of 10" wide if you print at 300 ppi. i.e. 3000 pixels divided by 300 pixel per inch = 10 inches. (3000p / 300ppi = 10")

 

dpi purely relates to printer resolution i.e. how many drops of ink the printer will put on the page per inch. Epson printers are usually 2880 dpi. The more the better generally but I find that on most occassions 1440 works well enough at home. If I was doing this commercially I may reconsider the dpi.

 

Anyway I hope this helps to demystify ppi & dpi a little.

[brettjohnson]

Francesco,

 

A lot of people (me included) adjust the image size for the intended print size at the resolution I want. If I am sending prints to the lab for printing I resize them all to 6 x 4 at 400ppi (400 is the preferred resolution for the Agfa D-Lab1 printer). This means each image is reduced from [3000 x 2000ppi] to [2400 x 1600ppi]

 

The reason I do this is that I have control over how the image is resampled. I am more confident in Photoshop than I am in the generic Epson printer drivers. I don't let the print drivers do anything other than act as a communication path between the PC and the printer. All printer driver functions are disabled (colour management etc) and all driven by photoshop.

[jtk]

Epson printers mostly default to 720dpi (don't know about C84) and most actually-experienced folks advise using a factor of that, such as 1440 (most commonly). Theories aside, it's easy to see improvement from 720 to 1440ppi. Recommendations to use 300dpi invariably come from minilabs, old books, and other irrelevant sources.

 

I trust Epson and QTR and Qimage drivers implicitly, excluding my CS2 from the game after making my corrections at 12X18 scale no matter what size I want to print below that. CS2 can create unnecessary bottlenecks.

 

There's no reason to resize (down) if one has reasonable (1G) ram.

[brettjohnson]

John,

 

Your answer only goes to confuse people more by using dpi & ppi interchangebly. They are quite different things. The 300ppi that people speak of has absolutely nothing to do with the 720 or 1440 dpi and is not some draconian data that is lifted from dusty old books and from old men in coats working mini-labs. Both dpi & ppi are technical terms to describe technical measurement standards in both images and prints.

 

Again - ppi represents the amount of pixels that will be printed per inch and the dpi is the dots of ink (not pixels) that the printer will print per inch. You can print 300ppi at 360dpi, 720dpi, 1440dpi or 2880dpi. Both factors have an impact on quality of print output.

 

Once these factors are understood it makes the whole printing and image sizing thing much simpler.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Whats interesting is that with our 11x17 color copier, one CAN see subtle differences going from 300 to 350 to 400 dpi/ppi, with a detailed topo map, or with micro text from hell on some types of printing. Normally 300 dpi/ppi is the max I like to use with the maps I create, if I is possible, I strive to only use 250. Unless you have a specific image, there is really no exact answer. Folks seem to get would up with questions like this. Run some actual tests , with YOUR types of images. You may find that even 200 dpi/ppi is ok.

[kelly_flanigan1]

Here I run a print shop.<BR><BR>Re <i>So why make you printer do more than is needed, it takes longer to print and consumes more ink.</i><BR><BR>NONE of the large format 54, 36, 24 inch inkjets, or color copiers uses more ink or toner if I send a higher ppi image to the device. Here I buy several thousand dollars worth of inkjet ink per year, and find the comment about ink consumption abit bizzare, at least bizzare for my limited 15+ years of inkjet printing. We have actually measured the weight of a paper sample with a 1/10,000 gram mettler balance, to measure drying of samples, and one can measure the drop in weight during drying. One can actually measure the mass increase of a printed sheet.

[kelly_flanigan1]

There maybe some printers that use more ink. I sure dont own any that use more, with high ppi images.

[jtk]

Kelly, you're right about my dpi/ppi carelessness. For what it's worth, I only mean to say ppi when I'm talking about scanners and files..ppi is irrelevant to inkjet printers.

 

Despite your affection for them, I'm correct when I bash those musty books (circa 2003) and minilab urban legends, and I'm correct about 1440dpi being obviously (naked eye) higher detail resolution than 720dpi, not to mention 300dpi (which Epson ordinarly interpolates to 720dpi anyway). As well, it's clear that 2880dpi, which Epson offers for good reason, DOES (I've never counted the dots !), blurt out a *lot* more ink than 1440dpi..you can see puddling with many images...its only rarely useful in my experience, but CAN intensify fine blacks in delicately detailed images where puddling isn't likely .

[jimsimmons]

Thanks for all the observations. Sounds like my experiences are about the same as others - 300dpi/ppi/whatever (I get it!) gives about all the crispness one could ask for from my scanned 35s and 6x7s, but some softer images can get away with 240 and a few ultra sharp images might benefit from 360.