300dpi

Dramatapix®

I'm really showing my naivity here. I just submitted my 'assignment' images to a newspaper and the publisher asked about having them in 300dpi because they printed better? Everything I'm looking at in my EXIF information and in Photoshop shows that these images are 72dpi. Are digital images shot in 72dpi? Can they be converted?

Sorry if I sound like a dope on this one.

Brett

Light and Shadow

Seventy-two dpi is the setting used for posting to a web site. If you are processing RAW files you select the dpi as part of the output parameters and 300 is a common output setting. I'm surprised that they said nothing about the colour output. For the web is's usually sRGB and for other things usually Adobe RGB.

digismile

The real issue is how many pixels does the picture have, not the dpi. Any picture can be configured to "xxx dpi" from whatever is showing in the current exif.

For example, if your image is 600 pixels x 400 pixels, and if you save the file as 600 x 400, 100 dpi, it will be seen and printed by most software as a 6" x 4" photo (600/100=6). The same photo, same number of pixels, saved at 200 dpi, will print as 3" x 2" (600/200=3). A general rule of thumb that many magazines and newspapers use is 300 pixels per inch of print. So a picture that prints at 6" across needs to be 6 x 300 = 1800 pixels wide.

So the issue is that you need to give them sufficient pixel detail to print at any reasonable size. The fact that your exif currently says 72, isn't a problem.

Open your file in Photoshop (or something similar) and go to the Image -> Image Size dialog box. Uncheck the Resample Image option and change the resolution to 300. The "size" of your photo will change in inches, but the total pixels remains the same.

Your photo can now be saved, the exact same size, but with 300 dpi as its resolution instead of 72. The question came up a long time ago whether a camera could be set to save at a different resolution. I don't recall that any camera had this feature, so you'll have to do it in post processing.

Most of us just process our photos oblivious to the resolution that a file is saved at because we display it on a monitor. Many programs however use this setting to determine the preferred print size.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Dramatapix®

digismile wrote:

The real issue is how many pixels does the picture have, not the dpi. Any picture can be configured to "xxx dpi" from whatever is showing in the current exif.

For example, if your image is 600 pixels x 400 pixels, and if you save the file as 600 x 400, 100 dpi, it will be seen and printed by most software as a 6" x 4" photo (600/100=6). The same photo, same number of pixels, saved at 200 dpi, will print as 3" x 2" (600/200=3). A general rule of thumb that many magazines and newspapers use is 300 pixels per inch of print. So a picture that prints at 6" across needs to be 6 x 300 = 1800 pixels wide.

So the issue is that you need to give them sufficient pixel detail to print at any reasonable size. The fact that your exif currently says 72, isn't a problem.

Open your file in Photoshop (or something similar) and go to the Image -> Image Size dialog box. Uncheck the Resample Image option and change the resolution to 300. The "size" of your photo will change in inches, but the total pixels remains the same.

Your photo can now be saved, the exact same size, but with 300 dpi as its resolution instead of 72. The question came up a long time ago whether a camera could be set to save at a different resolution. I don't recall that any camera had this feature, so you'll have to do it in post processing.

Most of us just process our photos oblivious to the resolution that a file is saved at because we display it on a monitor. Many programs however use this setting to determine the preferred print size.

Hope this helps,

Regards,

Brad~

This is awesome information and will help me greatly in the future.

Thanks.

Brett

01af

Dramatapix® wrote:

I just submitted my 'assignment' images to a newspaper and the publisher asked about having them in 300 dpi because they printed better. [...] Sorry if I sound like a dope on this one.

The dope actually is that fool of a publisher.

digismile wrote:

[...] Your photo can now be saved, the exact same size, but with 300 dpi as its resolution instead of 72 dpi.

Please note the procedure outlined by 'digismile' won't change the image's actual resolution at all. The pixels in the image file remain exactly the same. The only thing changed is a meaningless number in the EXIF data.

-- Olaf

Rene`

Great info... but I have one question.
I recently got some pictures back from Smug Mug. They were only 4 by 6's. They looked a little digital. Could it have anything to do with the fact that I saved them at 300dpi as a level 10 Jpeg after I edited them?

Thank you,
Rene`

digismile wrote:

The real issue is how many pixels does the picture have, not the dpi. Any picture can be configured to "xxx dpi" from whatever is showing in the current exif.

For example, if your image is 600 pixels x 400 pixels, and if you save the file as 600 x 400, 100 dpi, it will be seen and printed by most software as a 6" x 4" photo (600/100=6). The same photo, same number of pixels, saved at 200 dpi, will print as 3" x 2" (600/200=3). A general rule of thumb that many magazines and newspapers use is 300 pixels per inch of print. So a picture that prints at 6" across needs to be 6 x 300 = 1800 pixels wide.

So the issue is that you need to give them sufficient pixel detail to print at any reasonable size. The fact that your exif currently says 72, isn't a problem.

Open your file in Photoshop (or something similar) and go to the Image -> Image Size dialog box. Uncheck the Resample Image option and change the resolution to 300. The "size" of your photo will change in inches, but the total pixels remains the same.

Your photo can now be saved, the exact same size, but with 300 dpi as its resolution instead of 72. The question came up a long time ago whether a camera could be set to save at a different resolution. I don't recall that any camera had this feature, so you'll have to do it in post processing.

Most of us just process our photos oblivious to the resolution that a file is saved at because we display it on a monitor. Many programs however use this setting to determine the preferred print size.

Hope this helps,

Regards,