What dpi are your pictures?

[hulseyfam]

What dpi are your pictures that you scrapbook?? I know your LO itself is usually 300, but do you put your pics at 300 too or 180 or??

TIA!

[katrinak]

300 dpi for me.

[Kirsty85]

300dpi for me too

[ashleygg]

300 here too.

[lima]

300 dpi as well

[justmp]

300 for me, too!

[Jen D]

Confused... why are my pictures a resolution of 72? I have a Canon 50D and I use the highest pixel size. Is there something I change from my camera because I think if you change the resolution from the program you get noise?

[dorah]

300 dpi here as well

[readstoomuch]

Originally Posted by Jen D

Confused... why are my pictures a resolution of 72? I have a Canon 50D and I use the highest pixel size. Is there something I change from my camera because I think if you change the resolution from the program you get noise?

I've wondered about this too, Jen. I'll look back here and see what others say about this. I too have the 50D Canon.

[LauraBean]

Here is how I understand it: DPI has to do with printing, and PPI has to do with screen resolution. WHen I bring a photo into Photoshop Elements, it defaults to 72 PPI, but the size (look at your rulers) is huge. I create a new document at 300 PPI for a layout and drag the photo into it and it changes to 300 PPI to match the document and becomes a more reasonable size.

DPI and PPI are relative--more dots per inch is better resolution for a given print size (up to a point--at some point we just can't see the difference) but it's meaningless unless you know the measurement in inches since it's a ratio.

Does that make any sense? Your cameras give you pictures of a given absolute number of pixels (my 40D gives me 3892 x 2896), plenty of pixels for any reasonable sized photo. If you take those pixels and spread them out over a billboard, you'll see lower resolution because your pixels per inch will be much smaller than if you spread the same pixels out over an 8 x 10 print.

[dugarner]

72 ppi is the best resolution for viewing pictures on a computer monitor. That's one of the reasons we resize our gallery images to 72 ppi.

Since resolution just tells you the size of an image (multiply ppi^2 X area of the picture), a 72 ppi image straight out of the camera will be something like 54 inches X 36 inches, or whatever.

In PS or PSE, open an image right out of your camera. If you look at the dimensions in the bottom left-hand corner, it will be something huge like 54 inches X 36 at 72 ppi. Go to Image | Resize | Image, and uncheck the "resample image" box. Then enter 300 in the resolution box and see what your dimensions change to. My 10 MP camera will give images that are 13 X 9 at that resolution. I can't print larger without losing some quality (depending on size and distance from the print, it might or might not matter).

So with my camera, I can take an image SOOC and put it in a 13 X 9 space or smaller on a scrapbook page and maintain a minimum of 300 ppi. You don't need to resize your pictures; you can take them at 72 and put them on your page. But it is good to know the dimensions your camera will give you at 300 ppi. I know if I want to do a 12X12 picture on a page, it will be slightly less than 300 ppi, but not much. It still looks great.

It's an simple concept but the math is convoluted. Here's an example.

My picture straight out of the camera (SOOC) is 72 ppi at 54 X 36 inches. That means there are 72 pixels across for each inch and 72 pixels down for each inch. In a square inch there are 5184 pixels.

If I multiply 54 X 36 (to get square inches) X 5184, I get 10,077,696. So 54 X 36 X 72 X 72 is 10, 077, 696, or about 10 MP.

If I take that same image and put it in a 12.907 X 8.64 space at 300 ppi without resampling (the computer doesn't add or take away any pixels), I do the math (this is the exact size my images will be at 300 ppi without resampling):

12.907 X 8.64 X 300 X 300 = 10,036,483, or about 10 megapixels.

Okay, really long, convoluted answer to an easy question!

[dugarner]

Laura beat me to it, with a much simpler answer! DPI is printing, it means dots per inch, so if you take a 300 ppi layout and print it on a 72 DPI dot matrix printer, it's still going to look cruddy.

[ashleygg]

Originally Posted by Jen D

Confused... why are my pictures a resolution of 72? I have a Canon 50D and I use the highest pixel size. Is there something I change from my camera because I think if you change the resolution from the program you get noise?

Jen, when I go to change my image size in PS it automatically has 72 dpi in the little box. Change that to 300 when you are resizing your photos and you should be fine.

[Jen D]

Okay got it now. I do drag them on my 300dpi layout so I am printing what I thought I was =)

[dugarner]

Originally Posted by Jen D

Okay got it now. I do drag them on my 300dpi layout so I am printing what I thought I was =)

That's right, and if you're printing them straight to your printer or at a photo shop, you don't need to resize them, because by virute of ordering the 4X6 print, you are getting the same high resolution.

[hulseyfam]

I'm a little slow...so bear with me!

So with all of this talk, I still don't quite get if I'm OK to take 180dpi and put it onto a 300dpi LO and be fine. And how much bigger can I make them-how much larger can I resize the pics?? THey are showing 180dpi and approx 2x3 in size. So can I go an uncheck resample and put in 300dpi and the correct size I want them to be?

[ang517]

My previous cameras were mostly 300 but my new one is HD and they're 480.

[LauraBean]

Jaime, don't apologize: I think it's a very confusing subject!

And your situation sounds especially confusing. At 180dpi, your photos are only 2 inches by 3 inches? Those would be pretty small images. Even my cell phone outputs way more pixels than that. If you just look at file info on one of your photos, what are the dimensions in pixels?

I never use resize or resample commands in Photoshop on my photos. I use the photos on a 300 dpi canvas, and everything I drag onto that canvas is then at 300 dpi.

I'm guessing I'm not understanding something here!

[dugarner]

Originally Posted by hulseyfam

I'm a little slow...so bear with me!

So with all of this talk, I still don't quite get if I'm OK to take 180dpi and put it onto a 300dpi LO and be fine. And how much bigger can I make them-how much larger can I resize the pics?? THey are showing 180dpi and approx 2x3 in size. So can I go an uncheck resample and put in 300dpi and the correct size I want them to be?

Laura said, "And your situation sounds especially confusing. At 180dpi, your photos are only 2 inches by 3 inches? Those would be pretty small images. Even my cell phone outputs way more pixels than that. If you just look at file info on one of your photos, what are the dimensions in pixels?

I never use resize or resample commands in Photoshop on my photos. I use the photos on a 300 dpi canvas, and everything I drag onto that canvas is then at 300 dpi."

Jaime, Laura is right. The problem is that you are starting with a file that is lower resolution that a normal image would be. I don't understand why your photos are 180 ppi and 2X3. Even a 2 MP camera (which you can't even buy anymore) would put out 4 X 6 images at 300 ppi. That sounds like someone scanned them at a very low resolution. Even a disposable digital camera will take higher resolution pictures than that. What is the source of these pictures? Are they from a digital camera? If so, you may have the resolution set too low. Let me know the model of the camera and I'll do some research if you need me to.

If you uncheck resample, you won't be able to get them up to 300ppi. If you keep resample checked and put in 300 ppi, they go up to 300 ppi but will look quite grainy, even at 4X6. It's like taking a dozen eggs from their carton, which they fit into quite nicely, and spreading that same dozen across the surface of a cookie sheet, where they are spread far apart. The computer will take all that empty space and fill it in with what it "thinks" should go there.

I think to resolve this issue, we need to know the source of your photos. It doesn't make sense to me that they are so low-resolution.

PM me if this isn't making sense.