300 DPI RESOLUTION CALCULATOR HOW TO
300 DPI RESOLUTION CALCULATOR SOFTWARE

However, if you step away from the computer screen you will see it start to appear just as sharp as the higher resolution prints as the viewing distance becomes greater.īy now it should be pretty clear that dpi and ppi are not at all the same.

You can clearly see how, at lower resolution the print becomes blurry and edges jagged because we do not have enough dots per inch to make a smooth transition. To illustrated this, I printed the same photo at the same dpi as the previous examples. Similarly huge billboards that you can see from the motorway may be printed anywhere between 1 - 52 dpi, because we are so far away from the billboard it looks good, but stand just a few feet away you will see large dots and squares. As you move the print further away from you, our eyes cannot distinguish the individual dots as the viewing distance becomes greater and the photo appears sharp.Ī good example of this is newspapers that print at 72 dpi which is why you can easily see the dots in photos in newspapers. When looking at a low resolution print up close, it will be blurry and you will be able to distinguish individual dots and sometimes even gaps. One printed pixel can be made up of several dots of ink. Printers do not create pixels they create dots of ink on a paper hence Dots Per Inch. It refers to the pixel density per inch of the device screen, meaning how many pixels there are in an inch.ĭpi on the other hand refers to physical print devices. Pixels Per Inch refers to and electronic device screen, this can be your TV, computer, phone or tablet, as long as it is an electronic screen.

300 DPI RESOLUTION CALCULATOR SOFTWARE

Doesn’t even ring close to the same now does it? So why does so many use the terms interchangeably?įrom software manufacturers, I’m looking at you Adobe Lightroom, to reputable photography outlets and online speakers talk about ppi when they really mean dpi obviously helps with the confusion. Just break it down, Dots Per Inch and Pixels Per Inch. You may have heard terms such as ppi and dpi being used in reference to printing and there is a very common misconception that dpi and ppi are the same when they in-fact are not. To answer the seemingly simple question of ‘how large can I print my photos’, we first need to understand how image resolution relates to print resolution. I won’t get to technical in this as I want as many as possible to be able to gain something from this article. Therefore I decided to finally write this article and share one of the steps to making the perfect print. When I started researching printing myself, what I found online was that many articles started off good, but lost the reader with technicalities and didn’t do a good job of giving any visual reference, while some were just plain wrong. When it comes to printing a photograph we all seem to quickly reach the question that many have asked time and time again how large can I print my photo? These are the print-worthy photographs, as I like to call them. Dot pitch is calculated from the diagonal length in inches and pixels then converted from inches per pixel to millimeters per pixel but normally only expressed in millimeters (mm).Many of us like to print our very best photographs to hang in our house, give away as a gift or venture into selling it as art.

300 DPI RESOLUTION CALCULATOR HOW TO

How to Calculate the diagonal dot pitchĭiagonal dot pitch is the diagonal distance from the center of one pixel to the center of the next. So there are 48528 pixels in an area of the screen that is 1 inch wide by one inch high. Using this same computer screen, PPI 2 will be: Example: Calculate Pixels per Square Inch, PPI 2 So there are 220.29 pixels in a 1 inch line on the display. You want to find the pixel density in one linear inch of display.Ĭalculate the diagonal length in pixels with the Pythagorean Theorem: You have a computer screen that is 1920 pixels wide by 1080 pixels high. Substitute 1 cm for 1 inch to find pixels per square centimeter or PPcm 2. The number of pixels in a square inch represents the resolution or pixel density of an area of one square inch. Multiply PPI × PPI to get pixels per square inch. How to Calculate PPI 2 or Pixels per Square Inch Just substitute cm for inches to find PPcm. You can use the same PPI formula above to calculate pixels per centimeter, PPcm. If a display does not have square pixels then this calculator does not apply. The PPI will be the same whether it's a horizontal or vertical or diagonal inch because pixels are square and therefore symmetric. The number of pixels per inch or PPI tells you how many pixels are in a 1 inch line on a display screen.

300 dpi resolution calculator