Grafix?-Photos-dpi changing effect pixels?

[Lee]

Does changing the dpi in photos, suppose to make it alittle more pixelized? Do I need to change the pixels in order for photo not to look distored/blured? Can any of those plugins resolve some of these problems?

David Atwood might beable to answer this as he acted as tho he knew some about dpi's in previous post.

[MiguelPereira]

DPI - Dots Per Inch is litteraly the quantity of pixels that you have on an line 1 inch long. When you change that what you are chaging is the outcome on the final printing size, say that you have an image with 900x900:

if you chose the image to have 30 dpi when you print it the image on the paper will be 30x30 inches long, as if you chose 300 dpi the image will only have 3x3 inches.

is this clear? well i hope it is

and BTW is name is david.atwell

[david.atwell]

Miguel is correct. Also, to add on: 72-92 dpi is standard for most web work (though it tends not to matter, as most monitors go by absolute pixel size anyway) and 300dpi is standard for most printing work (900 dpi for most offset printing, though THAT tends not to matter as offset printers require CMYK color modes, which PdN doesn't support and won't).

Does this help?

[Lee]

Yes, it is sort of clear. I have been up all nite, trying to figure things out.

My photos are too big for photo frames & have been trying to figure a way to shrink them without effecting the pixels. I did try again taking a snapshot of photo at full screen & it worked better this time. I have not total figured out how to get things shrunken without effecting the clarity of the photos total yet. I did try putting a wide canvas in the photo & then taking a snapshot but that did not seem to shrink photo's snapshot.

As this project is for printing, this is why Paint.Net freezes up, slows down, takes a lot of ram. My files are too big.

Will you forgive me for misspelling your last name? Sorry.......:-(

[david.atwell]

I don't mind. I've been called far worse. :-)

[Lee]

Does changing the dpi really improve the file when printing?

I created a file with photos & graphics at 150 dpi. It printed great. Lost my original file on hard drive & recreated same file at 300 dpi. It did not print well.

I am starting a new file in Paint.Net, setting page size & dpi, then importing all my graphics which are of different dpi's. I import background file, instead of opening background file & importing the rest. Some graphics are too small on my original file/layout. Others too big. I had though about resizing all of them to say 150 dpi or 300 & then try importing. But if that effect the pixels, I guess that is not a good idea.

Other idea, open background file first (usually 100 dpi), import graphics. Take snapshots of anything that don't fit.

Other idea was to take snapshots of graphics while at full screen, thus creating a new file & then I can paste into Paint.Net & set the dpi to what I want.

What do you say guys? Create new file or resize or start with original background file first (don't create first layer)? I think I am still going to run into problems as camera's dpi is 200 dpi. Background files are 100-300 dpi. I am dealing with too many dpi's.

[Lee]

This brings to mind, another questions guys....

If I take a snapshot of my screen, can I set the dpi at anything I want? Does it matter on my monitor's resolution etc?

[david.atwell]

It depends on the DPI of your printer whether your image will look better printed at a higher DPI or not. Your image will look its best when printed at your printer's native DPI.

As for screen work- if your picture is 800x600, it will be the same size whether you show it at 92dpi or 1dpi. Your computer largely ignores DPI data until it's time to print.

[Lee]

>It depends on the DPI of your printer whether your image will look better printed at a higher DPI or not. Your image will look its best when printed at your printer's native DPI.

It sounds like I am configuring these files just for my printer & may not print well on someone else's printer or at WalMart's Photo dept. I wanted to make files all at 300 dpi but Paint.Net can not handle huge files. That is why I dropped to 150 dpi. Besides I was pleased with what my printer printed.

This is a Brother multifunction printer...not expensive...$50 after rebate...6000x1200 dpi it says. Got it about 1 yr ago & really have not used it much till now. I scan more than I print. Scrapbook is for a friend.

As for screen work- if your picture is 800x600, it will be the same size whether you show it at 92dpi or 1dpi. Your computer largely ignores DPI data until it's time to print.

It depends on the DPI of your printer whether your image will look better printed at a higher DPI or not. Your image will look its best when printed at your printer's native DPI.

>As for screen work- if your picture is 800x600, it will be the same size whether you show it at 92dpi or 1dpi. Your computer largely ignores DPI data until it's time to print.

So I need to print these files first to see how they print before importing them into a layer? I think this thing is set at the next setting. I thought I might play around with setting the monitor's resolution & see if I can create smaller frame sizes with some of these graphics.

With graphics you "crop"...you don't shrink or stretch. I keep thinking about this & how it applies to these graphics. Now I just have to figure out how to do it, without effecting those pixels.

Thanks David as I am starting to learn things here. Glad I join.

[Lee]

I found out what some of my problems are...my dedicated viewer...Irfan.

When I think something is pixelated, it is not. I do have FastStone & will start using it on a regular bases.

In the file attachment, looked bad on screen using Irfan veiwing pgm. I created this file with Paint.Net & it looked fine at the time. I thought what I saw thru P.Net was the same as thru Irfan but found out otherwise today.

What I thought were bad pics, were not. It was my viewing prgm.

[Lee]

This is alittle off topic here but I must show you the country side.

I moved to the country last summer. The sites out here, will take your breath away it is so pretty.

It is important to me to find a good graphic pgm that will do what I want, crop, adjust color, make great printouts etc, because these are digital photos. I am learning how to manipulate them, digitally.

This summer I had someone help me cut down some low leam in this photo. Here is just one photo. dpi is 100.

[Lee]

Saved in jpg format & of low quality....but you will get it how beautiful it is out here.

[Lee]

In previous file attachment is a dragline to the left of first photo (red thing in photo).

The bottom photo is my favorite as the path goes deep into woods.

I won't bore you much longer as here is just one more page I have created with Paint.Net.

[david.atwell]

Lee- that's certainly beautiful, but please post off-topic messages in the offtopic thread, located in the overflow. Also, double-posting is frowned upon- please use the edit function. Especially four times in a row...

Thanks.

[Lee]

Sorry David I will try to have better respect for the rules. You might move some of the above post to the appropriate forum as one mod did do this recently.

I am still having trouble figuring out the dpi's. It looks likes from my testing I need to make the first layer at 300 so the photos will come out clear. While I can use Paint.Net for this project, Paint.Net is very slow at handling big file sized files. That is what I experienced the first time I use pgm. Took me 2 days just to create 2 pages.

I thought I could use some background files that are 100 dpi, keeping the files down in size, making Paint.net work for me. Those files print very well, it is the photos that look like bloody potato when printed. It looks like to me, if the first layer is 100, everything I import is reduced to 100 dpi.

Is this correct?

[david.atwell]

Yes. Every layer has to match in terms of DPI, and Paint.NET just assumes the first is the one you want to keep. :-)

[Lee]

Ok....First layer dictates what follows of what dpi I will end up with. Got it. Now I got to figure out what to do with background files that are set at 100 dpi. They maybe unusable with Paint.Net.

Btw, I notice if I change the dpi thru Paint.Net, the file size does not change. Why not? I would think more color would mean a bigger file size.

[Lee]

David why didn't you think of this......

Import all the graphics with same dpi...background or use background as first layer. dpi 100.

Import all other graphics such as photo frames, icons etc. dpi 100. Everything but the photos.

Print file

scan file....now you have a digital file. Depending on scanner, you can set scanner to the dpi you want.

(In my case I am going to try to export all the layers to 1 .png file, then export to a pdf. However thru the print command in P.Net I can turn all layers into one .pdf. Why? I have acrobatPro & can export what is in pdf back out as a graphic file. I can set the dpi in AcrobatPro. a lot of scrapbook freebies come in .pdf format. Not everyone knows how to extract what is in pdf without the software that is needed. Irfan's viewer will, as a example, extract what is in the pdf as a graphic file. I goes without saying, Acrobat does a better job of this.)

Now with the digital file on hard drive, open fle with Paint.Net, import photos.

Save file.

Now I got to practic doing this & see how well it print. For several days now, I have been trying to get around this .dpi issue.

You got to know what pgms you have & what each will do.

[david.atwell]

Btw, I notice if I change the dpi thru Paint.Net, the file size does not change. Why not? I would think more color would mean a bigger file size.

Nope. See, when you change the DPI, you're not changing anything to do with the number of pixels- you're just changing how they're printed.

Take, for example, a 900x900 image at 300dpi. There are 18000 pixels storing data. It would print out at 3x3 inches.

Now, change the dpi to 100. The image is still 900x900 pixels - that is, there are still 18000 pixels storing data. The file size, therefore, will still be the same, because there is an identical amount of data to store. But a printer would print it out at 9x9 inches. All that's changing is a small property in the header of the file - from "300" to "100."

You could even set it to 1dpi, and have it printed out at 900x900 inches - hooray for billboards! :-) Or set it to 900dpi, and it's a postage stamp (1x1 inch).

Glad you figured something out.

[Lee]

The Acrobat thing did not work so I am back to capturing the screen & pasting file in a pgm. I have always used the PrintScreen key when I need to capture.

PrettyDarnNeat posted how to do this by creating a layer, preseting the values, then pasting the captured screen into a new layer. I tried her method thru P.Net & the file was stretched. I can not have that. But might use her technique if I need to take a small frame size & make it a bigger frame size.

Other thing was print file then scan printout. When scanning, my scanner software will save file with 300 dpi. Only other way I can take a file that was preset at 100 dpi & turn it into a 300 dpi digital file that I know of at this time.

Btw, why isn't there a "preview" command in P.Net? To view your file at full screen while still in P.Net.

[MiguelPereira]

Btw, why isn't there a "preview" command in P.Net? To view your file at full screen while still in P.Net.

there was a request on that sometime ago, a fullscreen preview with a black background, and just the image showing no windows or bars, but i think Rick considered this to be "cobwell" so...

but again here's a request

[Lee]

David, I am surprised you do not know that if you change the dpi to a higher dpi while keeping the same frame size (letter size) that you do not know, the file saved on hard drive will be much larger.

I did some test with Paint.Net & some other pgms & Paint.Net was the only one that did not increase file size on hard drive. Unfortunately Paint.Net failed with this test.

I tried several times to take a snapshot of screen, paste into a layer with the dpi I wanted. Paint.Net blew up the image I was pasting into that later (without expanding canvas size). I was trying to take a 100 dpi (letter size) & make a new file with settings of 300 dpi (letter size). I was able to do this thru another pgm....FastStone, Irfan which are both viewers...not graphic editors. When I changed dpi settings in file, the pixels increased, save file & file size was bigger.

I have posted in the Tutorial forum the correct way to crop a photo. I will probably post in that forum how to change dpi's while creating a new file with a higher dpi. My print out of the new created 300 dpi file printed out fine.

See file attachment as of my results.

[MiguelPereira]

Lee your file size changes because when you change the dpi most software keeps the printing size instead of file size, which means that in order to reduce the dpi amount, the resolution has to be smaller so that the printing size remains the same, in Paint.Net it's the other way around, it preserves the image original size/resolution

[Lee]

This is strange. I have been playing around with the settings in Paint.Net. I was afraid if I reduced the pixels, it would effect the quality of my print out.

My problem has been, the photos won't fit in my first layer. First layer's settings: Page: Letter size DPI: 150.

Photos will print out & fit in first layer at: 7" x 10" filling up my first layer. I don't dare resizing with mouse as I believe the photo will pixelize or not print well. I was taught to crop photos.

Photos are showing to be in size: 15" x 9". Dpi: 180. One set of photos were too pretty to crop so I took photos & imported them into a bigger layer than the photo size showed & set layer at 20"x18". Saved file. Took a snapshot at full screen & pasted to same layer. This did give me the effect I wanted, a smaller frame size than what I started with, without effecting those pixels. This was a real pain to do tho.

As there must be easier way, I tried resizing thru Paint.Net. Reduced the pixels by 70%. I take it those filters are helpping me (bicubic etc)? It worked. I got a much more manageable photo to import into my first layer without effecting the quality of print.

David I believe you said it depends on your printer. I doubt if I took what I am creating to WalMart's photo dept, they could print as good as what I am experiencing right now with my printer. At least I am guessing about this.

So am I wrong to change the pixel size? Without changing pixel size of file, the file is unmanageable in my first layer (letter size, dpi 150). Taking snapshots of the screen is a real pain to do.