How much resolution photoshop

This means that in order to print at ppi and retain full-quality, I can print this image only as large as 5" x 3. What happens if we decrease our resolution from ppi to ppi? As you may have guessed, our Document Width and Height doubled when we halved our Resolution. We started with a 10" x 6. Now my image will print larger, but the quality will be much lower.

We notice that the pixel dimensions never change. We started with an image at x pixels px and ended with the dimensions still being x px. This is important to remember, because when we change resolution we are changing only how many pixels will be displayed per inch of the image, not how many pixels make up the image.

Imagine you and a friend each having a bucket full of seeds to plant in a field. You must use all of your seeds by planting them in 1 inch squares in a field.

Now imagine that you are allowed to plant only of your seeds per inch and your friend is allowed to plant seeds per inch. Both of you have the same number of seeds, but it will take you twice as much surface area in the field to plant all of your seeds. In this example, our image has been sent to print from a laser printer on standard 8. The print quality is extremely low, leaving the image looking very blurry or "soft". Which one to choose? The 72ppi and ppi images are too low of quality to produce a high-quality print, so they're out.

The ppi and ppi images both looked very crisp, but the ppi image was way too small. For this example, the ppi image would work best because of it's larger print size and high quality.

The key to printing images is to find the best resolution that will produce both the size and quality you need. In the recent past, all screens were pretty much at 72ppi. Now with HD, 4K, 5K and retina displays on laptops, tablets and phones yes phones also use ppi the resolution could be anything, often approaching the resolution of print.

The only number that matters on a screen is the actual Dimensions in pixels. And the other image was So how can the butterfly at 10 inches appear larger than the Because of resolution. This is why the dimensions in actual pixels are important on a screen, and this is the actual size of the image. We can calculate the dimensions if we multiply the size by the resolution. This image is at screen resolution 82 ppi the resolution of the monitor, 82 pixels fits into a single inch of screen size The width of the file is Looking at this image, we have enough pixels to display it nicely at It will look good on screen.

With the resample turned off. If we change the resolution to ppi enough for print we will only be able to print this at 3. Notice that the Dimensions dont change, so this is the same size as the previous shot. On a digital file, the only thing that affects its actual size is the dimensions in pixels. The resolution tells us how large a file can be at that resolution. Say you are going to create a poster at 10 inches by 7. This will be printed at DPI. You will always need 2 pieces of information when prepping a file, the final size in inches or cm and the resolution.

So you would figure out 10 x which is So your document would need to be pixels wide. Your poster would need to be created at x px. You should never evaluate the size of an on-screen image in inches or cm, only in actual pixels. The only thing that exists are the actual pixels. If you are only ever working on screen, change your unit of measurement to pixels and work in pixels. Right click on the ruler and choose the unit you want to use. The resolution will update to display that actual resolution of your monitor.

Now 1 inch on the ruler will equal 1 inch on your screen. Alright, that was a little more technical than our usual step by step tutorial. I hope it was useful to you. I will be adding another tutorial on how to resize you images. Browse our hundreds of other free tutorials here , or search for what you are looking for in the search at the top of the page. You can also browse by topics in the free tutorials menu.

If you are ready to get serious about Photoshop, see our full length courses here. You can get my free Layer Blending modes ebook here. If you like these techniques and you would like to dive deeper into Photoshop, I have just launched an in-depth Photoshop Course.

This was worth the time spent. I will recommend it to my camera club friends. Hi Colin. I use Photoshop to make prints of my artwork. I am still figuring out the right formula between the camera, Photoshop, and the printer. This tutorial was helpful in getting closer to that formula. Thanks Colin. I seem to spend a lot of time trying to explain this to my clients. You gave me a few ideas to help people understand this better. Hi Colin, This was Great Tutorial!! That really helped me.

Thanks Dennis. We need to distinguish vertical and horizontal sizes and dimensions. I know what you mean and you know what your mean, but my students are confused by this. Recommend you highly! I did some video editing work for european people and at rendering time, it always gave me bad feelings! Really enjoy your presentations. Colin, Perfect, perfect! So I have a client that needs poster size. So now I know how to size it for the photo printer.

Huge help as all you information is. Bless Colin the magician. I prefer in-depth. Keep it up. Bicubic Sharper. A good method for reducing the size of an image based on Bicubic interpolation with enhanced sharpening. This method maintains the detail in a resampled image. If Bicubic Sharper oversharpens some areas of an image, try using Bicubic.

You can specify a default interpolation method to use whenever Photoshop resamples image data. For best results when you produce a smaller image, downsample and apply the Unsharp Mask filter. To produce a larger image, rescan the image at a higher resolution. These two measurements, referred to as the document size , determine the total pixel count and therefore the file size of the image; document size also determines the base size at which an image is placed into another application.

You can further manipulate the scale of the printed image using the Print command; however, changes you make using the Print command affect only the printed image, not the document size of the image file. If you turn on resampling for the image, you can change print dimensions and resolution independently and change the total number of pixels in the image.

If you turn off resampling, you can change either the dimensions or the resolution—Photoshop adjusts the other value automatically to preserve the total pixel count. Then resample only as necessary. To change only the print dimensions or only the resolution and adjust the total number of pixels in the image proportionately, select Resample Image and then choose an interpolation method.

To change the print dimensions and resolution without changing the total number of pixels in the image, deselect Resample Image. File size depends on the pixel dimensions of an image and the number of layers it contains. Images with more pixels may produce more detail when printed, but they require more disk space to store and may be slower to edit and print. You should keep track of your file sizes to make sure the files are not becoming too large for your purposes.

If the file is becoming too large, reduce the number of layers in the image or change the image size. Buy Adobe Photoshop or start a Free Trial. Legal Notices Online Privacy Policy. Buy now. Image size and resolution Search. Make it. About pixel dimensions and printed image resolution.

Quickly display the current image size. Position the pointer over the file information box, and hold down the mouse button. File size. About monitor resolution.

About printer resolution. Determine a suggested resolution for an image. Click Auto. For Screen, enter the screen frequency for the output device. If necessary, choose a different unit of measurement.

Note that the screen value is used only to calculate the image resolution, not to set the screen for printing. For Quality, select an option:. Produces a resolution 1. Produces a resolution 2 times the screen frequency.

View the print size onscreen. Do one of the following:. Select the Hand tool or Zoom tool, and click Print Size in the options bar. The Print Size command is not available in the Creative Cloud version.