[Tech]

What would be a good resolution to work in, to produce a high quality image (high enough quality to frame, and put on a wall), printed at 8x11, or slightly larger.

I currently work at 600dpi, but I'm not sure if that not high enough, or to high.

[Frog]

Most high quality print for glossy magazines, books etc is done at 300 dpi. That really is about as high as you need to go, and in fact you can probably get away with working as low as 150 - 200 dpi depending on how detaled your image is. Anything below about 100dpi and the pixels in your image become visible in print, which you obviously don't want. Once you get above that the extra dpi means you can resolve extra detail but above 300dpi I doubt anyone would notice the difference, so 600 is probably overkill.

[Demon Prince]

Thanks Frog...I was also looking for this information cause I have to have a picture printed for school...

[eyewoo]

Bob,

I think my message wasn't clear. I believe you are referring to the ability for ink jet printers to print at DPIs from 360 dpi to 1440 dpi or higher. That is not what I was referring to. I generally always print at 1440 dpi or the highest dpi possible for the printer on the best paper possible...

What I meant was that because of the inkjet technology (printed at a high dpi) the jaggies are minimized, so that creating Images at 150 ppi (not dpi) are slightly enhanced by the ink jet technology.

yeah... it's confusing...

[ValarianROOT]

This is a great question. I say that because I've got a friend that works at Dickenson Press in Grand Rapids here. It is a Christian book publishing Co. She says that the book covers she works on are 2400 dpi. Crazy! I was told back in school that high end "art" books were printed at 300 dpi and newspaper at 72 or lower dpi. Now we've got printers working over 2k dpi and newspapers printing at 150+ dpi. What did I go to school for again?

JN

[Molako_Plus]

unfortunately val's school didnt teach him to "adapt".

[eyewoo]

I believe there is a slight advantage to using an ink jet printer as well. Shooting all those little dots of color tend to diminish the "jaggy" look that all those matrix'd pixels can produce. With a good ink jet printer, good results can be achieved at 150 ppi for 8.5" x 11" printing... i.e. 1275 x 1650 pixels... although the results will be better at 300 ppi.

[ August 10, 2002: Message edited by: eyewoo ]

[B0b]

when i print on my Epson C70 photos and other pics i try and get as high as i can.. the others are right about 200 (120 screen) - 300 (200 screen) dpi for magazine and other offset pinted work (line art is generally 1200dpi)

but when it comes to your inkjet printer thats a totally different kettle of fish because it doesn't print in a rosett pattern like conventional printing, instead it prints a noise of colour to make up the tones so the higher you can go the better your picture will look

[Ian Jones]

Eyewoo, you seem to refer to ppi and dpi as seperate systems. As far as I know they are not. dpi = ppi the only difference is that dpi may refer to printing with inkjet 'dots'. Just asking to clear things up a bit...

[Danny]

There are two facts about inkjet printers that people always get mixed up. Printer manufacturers label their devices with specs such as 1440x720 dpi or even higher. DON'T think this means that your printer can place 1440x720 dots on a square inch individually from eachother like pixels on a computer monitor. What these specific numbers refer to is the accuracy of the positioning of the dots on the paper. The actual ink droplets themselves are far larger. Those are roughly in the 300-320 dpi range. Their size is actually more commonly measured in picoliters. I believe 4 picoliters (0.000000000004 liters) is currently the smallest available inkdroplet printers can squeeze out nowadays.
So Tech, stick to the 200-300 dpi resolution for your Photoshop document at 8x11" and you'll be fine. 600 is major overkill.

[B0b]

quote:

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Originally posted by Danny:
There are two facts about inkjet printers that people always get mixed up. Printer manufacturers label their devices with specs such as 1440x720 dpi or even higher. DON'T think this means that your printer can place 1440x720 dots on a square inch individually from eachother like pixels on a computer monitor. What these specific numbers refer to is the accuracy of the positioning of the dots on the paper. The actual ink droplets themselves are far larger. Those are roughly in the 300-320 dpi range. Their size is actually more commonly measured in picoliters. I believe 4 picoliters (0.000000000004 liters) is currently the smallest available inkdroplet printers can squeeze out nowadays.
So Tech, stick to the 200-300 dpi resolution for your Photoshop document at 8x11" and you'll be fine. 600 is major overkill.

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if you say that then put this to the test, print a vector circle @ 300 dpi then ramp it up to 2880 and tell me that theres no difference...