I need some photos for a press kit. The recommendation is at least 640 x 480 with 300 DPI. The pics I have are 72 DPI. I know, that is really really low, but I didn’t oversee them being taken. Wish I had. I know this is a dumb question, but is there a way to increase the DPI?
Sorry guys. I didn’t realize I was leaving out a lot of details. The pics in question are 640 x 480 at 72 DPI. They are for an Electronic Press Kit. They ask for 300 DPI so they can have good quality files they can print out.
I was told 72 dpi was low. The guy that told me is in school for graphic design, so I assumed he was correct.
Yes, I do need a crash course in how all this works. Thanks for the link, much appreciated.
Thanks Ed. I think/hope that will work. All I know is they want pics at least 640 x 480 at 300 DPI for print if they deemed necessary. They will also use the pics for brochures, program guides, newspapers and such…. if I am to be so lucky.
Firstly, let’s swap "DPI" for "PPI"…the former is more of a printing lingo for "dots per inch", where the resolution of a digital image is measured in PPI, "pixels per inch".
As Ed said, a 640×480-pixel image at 300ppi will print out as a 640/300 x 480/300 size file in inches, or 2.1×1.6 inches. So, just tell them to print at that size, and you’re covered! ha!
Seriously though, the question becomes one of what size do they need an image to be printed at? If double the size is all, as roughly a 4×3-inch image, then you may well be able to resample your image to 1280×960-pixels and have something of passable print quality at 300ppi, but I doubt it. More than that? I don’t know the limits, but you will find the image quality degrades more and more as you resample to larger pixel dimensions. Even this example I quoted is, in essence, 75% artifically created data, 25% original data. That’s not exactly true but is an easy way to understand why the image quality would suffer.
Hmmm…"they want pics at least 640×480 at 300 DPI". If that is exactly the specification they gave you, then you can easily leave resampling off (unchecked) and set the resolution to 300ppi in the Image Size dialog. That really will change nothing about the image but, when saved, it will update information in the EXIF data for the file. Really, all they would have needed to tell you is they need images no smaller than 640×480 pixels, because it is up to the person doing the printing to ensure the application handling the image for print is treating it as a 300ppi resolution image. After all, for some brochures and such, a 2.1×1.6-inch image may truly be "big enough" depending upon the context of its use.
Sorry guys. I didn’t realize I was leaving out a lot of details. The pics in question are 640 x 480 at 72 DPI. They are for an Electronic Press Kit. They ask for 300 DPI so they can have good quality files they can print out.
I was told 72 dpi was low. The guy that told me is in school for graphic design, so I assumed he was correct.
Yes, I do need a crash course in how all this works. Thanks for the link, much appreciated.
Thanks Ed. I think/hope that will work. All I know is they want pics at least 640 x 480 at 300 DPI for print if they deemed necessary. They will also use the pics for brochures, program guides, newspapers and such…. if I am to be so lucky.
Thanks again guys!
What you have is a file which is 640 x 480 pixels. What you told PS to do is to display this file at 72 dpi. Hence, the display will be (about) 9 x 7 inches. What they appear to want is a file which is 640 x 480 pixels. It looks like they want to display the file at 300 dpi. If so, then the display will be (about) 2.13 by 1.6 inches.
The only way to make the displayed image bigger is to add many more pixels. Of course, that can be done using one of many tools (bicubic interpolation for example). However, the end result tends to be way less than good.
Are your images actually 640×480? The resolution measured as ppi — and note that dpi is not the proper terminology — combined with the pixel dimensions determine the print size. ppi is irrelevant for images viewed on a monitor with pixel dimensions determining the viewing size.
As noted above a 640×480 image at 300 ppi is a very small image when printed.
Thanks again guys for the info. It is impressive to see how knowlegeable and helpful everyone here is!
It’s obvious I have a lot to learn and you guys are doing a great job of teaching me the ropes.
I had a photographer take some 35mm pics for the film. They were physically 6 x 4. She also gave me a disc with digital prints of the pics. The digital versions are 640 x 480.
I am thinking about submitting some screenshots instead. They are 720 x 480 (widescreen). I assume those would be better, well wider.
Other than that I don’t have much to go on in terms of available pictures to submit.
They want pics that they can use in a variety of formats; print, web, newspaper, brochures, program guide, etc. "IF" I get so lucky…
BTW Can you take pics larger than 640 x 480 with consumer digital cameras? I wasn’t aware you could.
640 x 480 is nowhere near large enough for using in brochures. 2×1" is about the most you could expect from a file that size. Don’t submit a screen shot. The Repro would be terrible.
As a guide, for brochures you would need to be submitting 300 ppi resolution files. By doing the math you would need a 1200 pixel by 900 pixel file to reproduce successfully at 4" x 3".
The disc she has given you are "thumbnail" proofs. Ask her for high resolution versions of the scans.
As for "consumer" cameras. Yes there are very many available these days which are capable of much higher resolution than 640 x 480.
Sorry guys. I didn’t realize I was leaving out a lot of details. The pics in question are 640 x 480 at 72 DPI. They are for an Electronic Press Kit. They ask for 300 DPI so they can have good quality files they can print out.
I was told 72 dpi was low. The guy that told me is in school for graphic design, so I assumed he was correct.
Yes, I do need a crash course in how all this works. Thanks for the link, much appreciated. Thanks Ed. I think/hope that will work. All I know is they want pics at least 640 x 480 at 300 DPI for print if they deemed necessary. They will also use the pics for brochures, program guides, newspapers and such…. if I am to be so lucky.
Thanks again guys!
The simple answer is that being only 72 dpi at 640 x 480, when you change the resolution to 300 dpi, the actual size of the image is 2.1×1.6 inches, as the others have said. If that size is too small and you need to make it bigger, but still keep the 300 dpi, then the software has to interpolate the extra pixels needed to make the picture larger. When you create extra pixels, the image suffers and looks pretty bad, depending on how many pixels you need to add. If you only want to increase the size slightly, you can get away with it, but even just doubling the size to 4.2×3.2 inches will result in a poor picture. Sorry, but in essence, the answer to your question is no, if you want to maintain the same size, increase the dpi and keep the same quality.
Thanks again guys for the info. It is impressive to see how knowlegeable and helpful everyone here is!
It’s obvious I have a lot to learn and you guys are doing a great job of teaching me the ropes.
I had a photographer take some 35mm pics for the film. They were physically 6 x 4. She also gave me a disc with digital prints of the pics. The digital versions are 640 x 480.
I am thinking about submitting some screenshots instead. They are 720 x 480 (widescreen). I assume those would be better, well wider. Other than that I don’t have much to go on in terms of available pictures to submit.
They want pics that they can use in a variety of formats; print, web, newspaper, brochures, program guide, etc. "IF" I get so lucky… BTW Can you take pics larger than 640 x 480 with consumer digital cameras? I wasn’t aware you could.
Thanks again guys!
You most assuredly can make images bigger than 640 x 480 pixels. In point of fact, you cannot make them that small with any digital camera unless you process them to reduce the pixel count.
You may want to check the disk again; sometimes the thumbnails are in the main directory but the higher-resolution images are in a subdirectory. The filenames may be the same as the thumbnails or they may be slightly different, but with the same number (e.g., THM001.jpg vs. IMG001.jpg).
BTW Can you take pics larger than 640 x 480 with consumer digital cameras?
Yes, with all but the earliest cameras. Most cameras have a megapixel rating, and five and six is now a low number. a 640×480 is 0.3 megapixel, so you can see that the newer cameras are much higher.
Indeed, the link Phos pointed to you is a good one with much helpful information.
Generally speaking, no, reduction of an image’s size in pixels does not really degrade detail. But, depending upon your output objective…print, screen, etc., you would not want to reduce the size. At the common print quality resolution of 300ppi, the 2304×1728 image would provide a print of roughly 7.7×5.7 inches, whereas the 1200×900-pixel image is only good for 4×3 inches…a marked difference in print size. Meanwhile, the larger image is far too large for display use on a monitor; it would simply require more storage space on a hard drive while providing no visible improvement in on-screen image quality over the smaller image, assuming both were scaled to fit the display area.
So, a more typical approach would be to keep the large file for print purposes and make a duplicate that is reduced in size suitable for display use, if both print and display (monitor) output goals need to be satisfied. The orignal also would be used for any future edits, since it contains considerably more data.
Thanks for the help guys. I’m sorry about the link. I did start reading it the day it was posted and got sidetracked. One thing led to another and I totally forgot all about it. It wasn’t my intent to ignore any advice given or skip out on doing any research. I actually enjoy reading this stuff! I’m going to try and print the materials out to keep a hard copy. Thanks again for everything and thanks for your patients!
