Jump to content

DPI and YOU - Understanding Resolution for Print and Web


david.atwell

Recommended Posts

I did. :-) Fine, I moved it up a bit.

  • Upvote 1

 

The Doctor: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
Amy: But how did it end up in there?
The Doctor: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
River Song: I hate good wizards in fairy tales; they always turn out to be him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well written! If you're not in the teaching profession then you should be. Good use of humour too. We need a star emoticon! (Pretty please?)

Let me see if I got the gist of what you are saying:

Leave the DPI at 96 but resize from the 600 x 800 default since the quality will only improve by upping the size?

(Sorry David but it's math! eeewww!)

Then when it's ready for putting in the can - (i.e. uploading) save it as a .png & then reduce the size?

As a matter of course, I save everything as a .pdn & then save again as a .png & only then do I resize it & hit save again.

I like my uploaded images to be between 700 & 850kb for my sanity's sake (ISP sucks) but getting the right kb size is very much trial & error. If you have an easy way to explain this, I'd love to hear it (read it).

Usually I work on 1800 x 2400 but I was wondering if there was an optimum multiple?

Thank you for taking the time & the effort you put into this tute. (If you'd've presented this to me as an assignment, I'd've given you an A+++). :lol:

THiGVp.png

Knowledge is no burden to carry.

 

April Jones, 2012

 
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Heh, thanks! I appreciate the feedback.

Well, short answer: Yes, I'd recommend resizing the canvas at the beginning and making it bigger so you can get more detail into your gorgeous work. That way, if you make small, single-pixel mistakes, you can hide them by shrinking it down. :-)

As for good multiples - I recommend you know what your eventual size will be, and work in a multiple of that. For instance, sigs on this forum will eventually be 500x150, so working at 1000x300 is the simplest way to resize. It looks the best when it goes down exactly 50%. So, when you start off a project, increase canvas size by 200% or 400%, and when you're done, resize to 50% or 25% to get your desired size. The computer works best that way. :-)

Thank you for your response. Glad somebody made it all the way through. :-)

 

The Doctor: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
Amy: But how did it end up in there?
The Doctor: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
River Song: I hate good wizards in fairy tales; they always turn out to be him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Usually I work on 1800 x 2400 but I was wondering if there was an optimum multiple?

I answered this in a reply, but I added it to the tutorial-at-large. Find it here.

Thankyou very much for taking the time to write this, its incredibly clear and well written :idea:

Peter :D

Thank you, I'm glad it helps. :-)
Without a smidgeon of a doubt David, this has to be one of the best written, easiest to understand tut how to's on this forum. I only wish others would take a page from your book when thinking of adding tuts, and make them truly informative instead of just rehashing the same old same old.

ciao OMA

Oma, that means a lot, especially from you. :-) Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed, and yes, I agree - I wish others would write tutorials on concepts rather than procedures.

Also, I'd be remiss if I didn't thank user Neil Cassidy for pointing out my little bit of hypocrisy - my working size sig image in section 4 was way outside the bounds of the tutorial guidelines that I, myself, wrote. I have no excuse, and I beg the forgiveness of small monitor and slow network users. Thanks for catching that, Neil.

 

The Doctor: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
Amy: But how did it end up in there?
The Doctor: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
River Song: I hate good wizards in fairy tales; they always turn out to be him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

absolutely brilliant david! That explains a lot of things! thanks for the awesome tutorial!

  • Upvote 1

 

"Clearly it's a very serious and literal meaning. If you're not solving physics equations then get off my lawn!-Rick Brewster Paint.net Lead Developer"

Link to comment
Share on other sites

David...Being a fan of Vermeer, and studied his few works of art...loved your tutorial.

Certainly well explains the way we should work in pixels rather than the old master that worked with dots. I am going to beam this article to keep as it is one that will never be out of date.

In art terms trillons of dots sprayed on watercolour, is a different subject...but related.

tks...

L

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for your support, guys. I know this is a ton to digest all at once...that's why I made it self-linking, so it's easier to reach a section.

I'm glad you got some good out of it.

(Vermeer is a brilliant artist.)

 

The Doctor: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
Amy: But how did it end up in there?
The Doctor: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
River Song: I hate good wizards in fairy tales; they always turn out to be him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

David, you have no idea how much frustration & wasted time I went through in saving to the right image size & keeping the kbs down.

Many thanks!

P.S. The tute is printed & in my folder for future reference but doubt that I will need it. I really have the hang of this one now.

THiGVp.png

Knowledge is no burden to carry.

 

April Jones, 2012

 
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm glad I could help. If it helps you in the future, awesome; it's meant to be an ongoing reference, so you can take a look whenever you need to remember something. That's why it's got internal links. :-)

 

The Doctor: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
Amy: But how did it end up in there?
The Doctor: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
River Song: I hate good wizards in fairy tales; they always turn out to be him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I've been wondering for quite a long time now about the deepest secrets of DPI, and this just did all the wondering for me :P Thank you very much!

Just one thing.. Either I've missed the whole point of the lesson* or there's something amiss there:

Or change the DPI to 200 (from 96 (or 50 :P )). Now it will shrink those pixels to fill a half inch of space (100 / 200 = .5):

Holy Glossiness, Batman! The image got a lot higher-quality!

-The higher the DPI, the lower the image quality. (And vice versa)

*Which would be a shame since it's such a nice one

everythingfadestogreysi.png

Please forgive my possible complaints. I'm but an annoying little perfectionist when it comes to using english...

"I tremble in the presence of your terrifying skills of gardening."

Link to comment
Share on other sites

You've missed nothing. Good catch. :-) Alas, I'm afraid you're the victim of a previous draft and something missed in revision. I've corrected it.

Thank you for your feedback.

 

The Doctor: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
Amy: But how did it end up in there?
The Doctor: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
River Song: I hate good wizards in fairy tales; they always turn out to be him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

...saving to the right image size & keeping the kbs down...

Honestly, in modern web design, as long as the image isn't too utterly massive, size isn't much of an issue. They all download in the blink of an eye anyway. ;-)

 

The Doctor: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
Amy: But how did it end up in there?
The Doctor: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
River Song: I hate good wizards in fairy tales; they always turn out to be him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

...saving to the right image size & keeping the kbs down...

Honestly, in modern web design, as long as the image isn't too utterly massive, size isn't much of an issue. They all download in the blink of an eye anyway. ;-)

Oh I'd agree on that but we are limited to 2GB/month download...so I have to be careful.

THiGVp.png

Knowledge is no burden to carry.

 

April Jones, 2012

 
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2GB download? What kind of Orwellian state are you living in? I exceed 2GB down in a day sometimes! When i downloaded Adobe CS4 from my school sever, it was 7.5GB down - knocked it out in less than an hour!

Wow.

Now, if you mean 2GB up, that makes more sense. But still!

EDIT: Wow, that sounded...a heck of a lot more frantic than it was meant to. :-P

 

The Doctor: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
Amy: But how did it end up in there?
The Doctor: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
River Song: I hate good wizards in fairy tales; they always turn out to be him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Nope buddy that is all I get per month...all I can afford & then pay a princely sum. *sigh*

State is good old Queensland Australia...

  • Upvote 1
THiGVp.png

Knowledge is no burden to carry.

 

April Jones, 2012

 
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, then why are you wasting your bandwidth on my silly little tutorial? :-P Go, there's a big big internet out there!

Suddenly, every post you make got a little bit more valuable.

 

The Doctor: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
Amy: But how did it end up in there?
The Doctor: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
River Song: I hate good wizards in fairy tales; they always turn out to be him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Well, I'm honored.

 

The Doctor: There was a goblin, or a trickster, or a warrior... A nameless, terrible thing, soaked in the blood of a billion galaxies. The most feared being in all the cosmos. And nothing could stop it, or hold it, or reason with it. One day it would just drop out of the sky and tear down your world.
Amy: But how did it end up in there?
The Doctor: You know fairy tales. A good wizard tricked it.
River Song: I hate good wizards in fairy tales; they always turn out to be him.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

This is what a tutorial should be, this should be in the Paint.NET user guide if Simon Brown updates (I'd happily trade my spot in there for that one mabye).

Thank you very much for clearing up what DPI meant in an easy to understand and slightly hilarious way. I used to think it meant Dots Per Images rather stupidly, in the same way I used to think the "Olden Days" were really black and white. So thanks again :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...