Image Resolutions

[gene thornton]

<p>Never having been one for vague abbreviations much less the extreme use of acronyms I find myself somewhat confused. Having to deal with a print on demand publisher, the girl told me their acceptable photo size was 300, I questioned that and asked, do you mean 300, 000? No 300 will be fiine, so I then asked, do you mean 300K, the reply was , no just 300.<br>

Somewhat confused I said thank you and hung up.<br>

I am noticing other places just using 300 as a size, am I so far behind here or have we gotten so lazy we can't call it what it is. Or is there actually a 300ppi suitable for the printing 9 X 6 photographs in a photo book.<br>

It would seem to me that any photo printed at that resolution would be very poor.<br>

Please help me better understand this terminology.</p>

<p>Thanks</p>

 

[aplumpton]

<p>300 ppi is normally very acceptable in a digital print. In the days of silver based photographic paper and the non-digital processing, resolution of print paper was much lower than that of lenses or of film. This was OK, as most prints are made to sizes considerably larger than the film negative. </p>

[rnt]

<p>If your photo was 'sized' at 300ppi your resolution at 9" x 6" would be 2700 x 1800 pixels...</p>

[tonybynum]

she means 300 PPI - dpi is meaningless for this kind of print service. . .

[r_johnston]

<p>Printing and PPI are two different topics. <br>

300 PPI is generally the resolution in a digital file.<br>

Printers do not use PPI, but DPI or Dots per inch.<br>

Print at 300 Dots per inch, you have one quality print.<br>

Print at 1200 DPI and you have a much better quality printed page.<br>

Print at 2300 DPI and it is even better.... but still is printed from a 300 PPI original digital file. You could possibly create a 600 or 1200 PPI file from the same camera, but I doubt the "resolution" would be any better. For as I understand it, the 300 PPI file will contain the same resolution. You would just have a very large file from 1200 PPI that will show the same amount of detail.<br>

The only way you might have a better digital file, would be to compare a 300 PPI file and the file digital file from a FULL FRAME Digital camera. <br>

But, currently if you reduce the PPI of a 300 PPI file, you then lose resolution detail.<br>

So if printing a "Photo Book" it might be better to speak the the printer, not one of the employees and ask them what the DOTS PER INCH they will be printing final images with.<br>

For good examples of this, in PS set up an image to print an 8x10<br>

Set the PRINTER to print at 300 DPI.<br>

Then set the PRINTER to 1200 DPI, and one at 2400 DPI<br>

Then compare the resulting prints. <br>

Many do not like prints from commercial printers, because they do not know HOW to tell them they want better prints. MY prints especially those in Red Rock Country like Sedona and the Grand Canyon are printed at a setting or +1 or +2 depending upon what I want. The print at +1 will look more like one printed on my printer at 1200 DPI and the +2 will look like one printed at 2400 DPI...<br>

But this way I can get 16x20 or 18x24s printed to match my 8x10s...<br>

The clerk who marks the envelope, does not have the foggiest idea of what that means. BUT the tech running the equipment does.<br>

Once, when they were ordered this way, they printed them normally.<br>

They had to redo the entire batch at no charge. They never forgot again. :D</p>

<p> </p>

[hakon_soreide]

<p>Obviously, the girl you were talking to didn't really know what she was talking about, or she would have explained it to you, though I assume she meant that for whatever print size you are going for 300ppi is the output resolution. It would have been a bit easier if she knew how it worked herself and could just simply tell you the pixel dimensions they were after.</p>

<p>The 300 in question is definitely not a size in itself, it's the output resolution, pixels per inch, which when multiplied by the print dimensions should give you the size you need. 300 times 9x6, which ends up being 2700x1800 pixels - as Bob said.</p>

<p>I assume the photos going to be full bleed? In that case, they might also need 1/4 inch extra or so for each dimension to account for inaccuracies in cropping, but that is also something they should inform you about, of course.</p>

<p>Also, although I have no idea why printers pretending to know what they are doing insist on this, they might want you to set your image file to 300dpi. Just make sure you don't resize the pixel dimensions when doing that (unclick the "resample image" box in the resize dialogue).</p>

[peano]

<p><img src="http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/4005/ppih.jpg" alt="" /></p>