Digital Photography 101 - Understanding Resolution and Pixels for Printing
The highlight of a Digital Photography 101 class is sharing your photography with others. With digital photography there are many ways you can do this: email, your website, online photography albums, but as for those really good photos, they deserve to be printed and framed in beautiful unique picture frames.
In addition to framing and displaying your best pictures in hanging wall frames, there are several other reasons that you may want to print your photos. Here are some of the ways you can use printed pictures:
- Displayed in wood picture frames on the mantle, table and wall displays
- Posters
- Wallet pictures
- Memory books
- Greeting cards
- Photo crafts
- Photo competitions
Even in our digital day and age, we still have lots of interesting and beautiful things to do in print! Unfortunately, printing a picture isn’t as simple as clicking the print button on your computer. Printing a quality print of a photograph is trickier than printing, say, a flyer. These photo printing tips will help make the process easier so you can get better quality prints.
Digital Photography 101 - Pixels Matter
Before you resize a picture on your computer, figure out first if you may ever want to print it. If you do want to print it, always save the original.
The first thing to understand is how many pixels are needed when taking a picture in order to get a high enough resolution to produce a quality print for the physical size you want. Below are some figures to help.
High quality 10 x 13
2592 x1944 pixels (a 5 mega pixel camera set for high resolution)
High Quality Picture: 9×12 inches
2272 x 1704 pixels ( a 4 mega pixel camera set for high resolution)
High Quality: 8 x 10 inches
2048 x 1536 pixels ( a 3 mega pixel camera set for high resolution)
High Quality Picture: 4×6 or 5×7 inches
1600 x 1200 pixels (2 megapixel camera set for high resolution)
So, it’s true that you don’t need a camera with a lot of mega pixels in order to get quality photographs.
Using the proper settings on your printer is also important to getting a quality picture. Look at your camera manual or the manufacturers recommendations on their website. You can then use a photo editor to resample the pictures to the right dpi. For those new to printing, dpi stands for “dots per inch”. The more dots per inch, the finer the grain of the picture and the better it looks. Ink jet printers used today for printing quality pictures often have dpi resolution of around 1200 to 4800. This sort of dpi will produce quality prints of photographs that have around 140 to 300 pixels per inch.
The ppi (pixels per inch) is the measurement for the resolution of a digital picture and should not be confused with the height and width of a picture. For example a 200 pixel x 300 pixel picture would be very small while a picture with a 300 ppi isn’t necessarily small because ppi refers to the quality of the picture (not the physical size).
Digital Photography 101 – Paper for Picture Perfect Prints
Use photo-printing paper and if possible that which is made by your printer’s manufacture and is recommended for your model or model family. Use special paper for projects such as greeting cards. Both are sold at many office supply and crafts stores, as well as online.
If you’re looking for an easier way to get high quality prints, say for a special event such as a contest or a large size photograph you want to frame and display, remember that a local or online printer is another option.
Have fun printing your digital images!
Tags: digital photography 101, photo digital printing, photo resolution, photos printing, picture resolution, print resolution
