Can you use 72 dpi for print

Here is an example with 3 different formats of the same picture I just produced:. It will still remain exactly the same photo, whether the DPI is 50, , or anything else for that matter.

DPI stands for « Dots per Inch ». It is the number of points or pixels that are rendered in one inch on the interface. That means that on this screen, there is a maximum of different color dots that can be shown widthwise. If, for example, the screen is 21 inches, it means that in one inch we can fit approximately 61 color dots in one inch of the screen divided by 21 , so : 61 DPI. Thus, we have a resolution of 2. Clearly the two screens do not have the same number of possible displayable pixels per inch dots per Inch.

But what about the image itself? As you can see, the image is comprised of several color dots. These are pixels. It is the maximum width on which we could view the photo without losing any visual quality. In this way, we could easily distinguish square corners instead of round like we can see on the photo above. Conversely, if you have a screen that is twice as small, each pixel of screen would display one pixel out of two of the photo.

The photo would then be as clear and beautiful as it is supposed to be. To help you visualize, please open your Adobe Illustrator and make sure that you have this view setted: 8. Most use ppi, while some use both and ppi.

This has nothing whatsoever to do with screen resolution and has everything to do with how the ink whether dye, or pigment behaves when applied to the print surface. Now if you try and print a dpi image at PPI My best advice is to contact both your printer mfr, AND especially the paper mfr. Sign up to join this community. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top. Stack Overflow for Teams — Collaborate and share knowledge with a private group.

Create a free Team What is Teams? Learn more. Asked 4 years, 7 months ago. Active 3 years, 2 months ago. Viewed 27k times. Improve this question. WPgeek WPgeek 7 1 1 gold badge 1 1 silver badge 4 4 bronze badges. There are perfectly good and clear answers in the older questions — Janardan S.

Please make an effort to read the older questions before asking newer duplicates. I don't really see why everyone is so eager to downvote something. The reason I posted this is -trying to get more clarity confused me even more. Thanks for the links. I think I will have to take a day out to study all this.

It's going beyond my head.. Add a comment. But either way, resolution is basically describing some sort of dots per inch, either pixels or sprayed dots of ink. When thinking about printing your image, I want you to think in dots per inch DPI. Because printers today spray ink onto paper, and the more dots per inch sprayed, the higher the quality of the final print. Most printers will print at a maximum of DPI. To figure out how large a print I can make from a particular digital file, I have to do a little math.

This same formula applies to any size of print. My image editing software says my digital file is x 4, pixels at 72 DPI? You said my image needs to be DPI to print.

Well lets do the math again with the image you have at 72DPI. How many pixels does it contain? I used this particular pixel dimension as an example as this is the resolution of one of my own cameras. And this brings me to a small side note. Camera companies sell their cameras based on many different features, one of the most important being megapixels. If your camera produces files that are 7, pixels X pixels at 72 DPI, then each image contains 36,, pixels, but with numbers this large the camera companies just round to the nearest million, so in this instance you would have a 36 mega pixel camera.

First, using the method above, determine if your digital file has enough pixels capable of printing the size print you want at dpi. Both methods will require you have some sort of image editing software. As a professional photographer I use Adobe products to edit and manipulate my images, so for the purposes of this article I will describe these two different methods of converting the size of an image using Adobe Photoshop. In your image editing software you should find a window which shows your Image Size information.

In Photoshop this window is called…. It looks something like this. Next, deselect the resample box and you will notice your width and height are now displayed in terms of inches as opposed to pixels. And also notice how you can no longer manipulate the resolution of the image without effecting the width and height of your image.

Next, remember the term resolution is interchangeable between your digital file and printed image. Pixels vs Dots. With that in mind, change the resolution from 72 to and see what happens. You see, the Image Size Window really acts as an invaluable calculator. It has first converted pixels into inches, and it has now shown you that your 7, x 4. Now change your longest dimension to 6 inches. Why do you suppose this is?

An additional way to create a specific image size at DPI for printing is to use the cropping tool in your image editing software. First make sure your image has enough pixels to print your desired image size, then simply select the cropping tool, enter in your desired width and height and set a resolution of DPI. At this point what you have actually done is told your computer to throw away information. You have actually removed pixels from your image resulting in the smaller desired image size.

There are many methods to sharpening an image, but Unsharp Mask is my personal go to method after sizing down an image. Simply move the Amount slider to the right, and then click in the image are where the white box is to see a before and after of the effect.

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