So, you’ve just finished a great new flyer, business card, etc. and you’re so excited because you’ve sent it off to a printer. And all of sudden you get a message: “The resolution on this image is too low to print without it looking like doo doo.” (Okay, probably not the exact message, but you get me.)
You’re like, “What’s up with that?” It looks fine on my computer.
If you remember last week, we learned all images on web, your paint and your publisher program are raster images, which means they are made up of a bunch of little dots called pixels. So, let’s say you have one image that is 72 Pixels Per Inch (PPI) and another that is 300 PPI. Can you guess which one would be better suited for printing?
(Insert Jeopary Music here)
Right! 300 PPI would be because, the more dots you have per inch, the better image looks when printed out. Makes crazy sense, right?
Just about every image you find on the web is 72 PPI. Bummer, you’ll have to stop searching google images for your next print project. 🙁
You may notice that a printer and a stock photo site will use Dots Per Inch (DPI) instead of PPI. This is a reference to the actual printing process and all you really need to know that if you’re buying a photograph for a print project, you should buy it the size you need or larger, with 300 DPI.
All images you send to any printer should ideally 300 PPI, although you can make something passable with 150 PPI. And you’ll never get that dreaded “Low Res” message again.
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