With our eyes as the limiting factor, and the fact that most smaller prints are viewed from quite close, 300 PPI provides the best quality. The limiting factor on this choice is how our eyes work and what we actually see. On the other hand, having less than 300 PPI soon leads to an image that will start to lose some details.
At 300 PPI you get pretty good quality and having more PPI does not equate to seeing more detail in the print. In our Tutorials on Understanding Pixels and Understanding DPI and PPI we mentioned that a print should be around 300 PPI. We will be discussing the requirements for typical small prints that most people get done of their digital images in the common print sizes. With digital it is a little different - as you have more control over the whole process. When we took photos with film, you simply handed over the film for processing and printing. You can click and drag within the box to move it atop your photo, or drag any corner handle to adjust the box size.Preparing a photo for print is something that is very important and often overlooked in this digital age. Mouse over to your image and click and drag diagonally to draw a crop box. In that case, press Command-Z to undo the crop and enter either a smaller print size or lower resolution, or both. If your image appears to enlarge once you accept the crop, you’ve entered too large of a physical size and/or too high of a resolution for the number of pixels your image contains. When you’ve got the crop box just right, press Return or double-click within the box to accept it. You can also use the arrow keys on your keyboard to nudge the crop box into place. Tip: If you want to crop a photo while preserving its original aspect ratio, draw a crop box around the whole photo and then hold down the Shift key as you drag any corner handle diagonally inward. If your cropped image is enlarged, you’ve entered too large of a physical size and/or too high of a resolution for the number of pixels your image contains. This lets you experiment with document size and resolution without altering the number of pixels your photo contains (which preserves photo quality). The resulting dialog box reveals all kinds of information about your photo such as file size (how much space it takes up on your hard drive), pixel dimensions, and-most importantly for print-the Document Size section that tells you how big the photo would be if you printed it at its current resolution.įirst, you need to lock your photo’s pixel dimensions by turning off the Resample Image checkbox at the bottom of the dialog box. You can summon this dialog box in Adobe Photoshop (any version) by opening a photo and choosing Image -> Image Size (in Photoshop Elements, choose Image -> Resize -> Image Size, or press Command-Option-I in either program).
If you were to print this image, you’d need a piece of paper that’s over 40-by-30 inches! Luckily, by increasing resolution you can make the pixels smaller, which results in a smaller document size. (For example, if you used a lower quality setting on your camera, your image may not contain enough pixels to print an 8-by-10-inch photo at high resolution.) This dialog box is also handy for learning how big you can print your image at a given resolution. If your image doesn’t need to be cropped, you can use the Image Size dialog box for resizing.
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