Hi, this is Anne for Graphic Design How To, and today I want to talk about image resolution.
What is it?
I want to give you a few tips about how to use it.
And I want to give you a cool trick on how to take an image from the web or any image
that you have and make it perfect for print.
So let's get started.
OK, so first I want to talk about what image resolution is.
There's DPI and PPI.
DPI means dots per inch, and PPI means pixels per inch.
And these really do have a different meaning, but when someone says make it 300 DPI, they
mean the same thing as if they were to say 300 PPI.
Now in the web world and print world, they're pretty much the same.
Everyone sees them as being the same thing, so it probably doesn't matter unless you work
at a printing company where they might get a little more technical with those terms.
This is an image of a giraffe that I took at the zoo and I made it 300 DPI at 1 inch.
And you can get to those Settings via OPT CMD I.
So as you can see here, I've got 1 inch x 1 inch and 300 pixels per inch.
So at one inch tall, this will print nicely.
So let's look at that.
Right now it is blown up really big, but if I do CMD 1, that'll show me what it'll look
like printed out.
So it looks pretty clear as you can see.
Now let's look at one that's at 72 dpi.
This one, if we go to OPT CMD I, you can see it has 1 inch x 1 inch and 72 pixels per inch.
So this one looks good at one inch but it will
probably not print very well.
And now let's look at the 25 dpi.
This one is also 1 inch x 1 inch by 25 PPI and as you can see it has a lot less detail.
There's not actually 25 pixels in here, there's 25 x 25.
So you can see the lack of detai.
Here they are at full screen.
300, 72, and 25.
When you are using images, if you're wanting to print them out, they need to be at 300
ppi.
If you're wanting to use them for web only they need to be at 72 DPI and...
25, you should just never use it.
72 is the lowest you should go when you are creating a document.
I usually work in 300 resolution.
So we'll put this at let's say 11 x 8.5.
If you want to add bleeds, you would make it bigger than this but for a sheet of paper,
just a flyer, you want to have a resolution of 300.
Now this is something we're going to print, so anything you print, you want it to be 300
pixels per inch.
If this is going on the web, I still also use 300 pixels per inch, and then I'll Save
for Web later on.
It's just best to keep it at 300 when you're designing, because you never know when a client
will want a printed version, or they want the image to be a little bigger.
If you're at 72 DPI, that's going to be a problem.
It's going to start looking blurry.
So just start with 300, and keep that as your native file.
And I downloaded an image from Pexels, you can get that link from the video description.
Here's the image I downloaded.
I'm going to select all.
It's already selected all but CMD A, CMD C to copy and then CMD tilda (~) to get to my
document.
And now I'll paste it - CMD V, CMD T, CMD zero.
And now we can resize to the size of my document.
And I'll just move this over like this.
Maybe give it a little more room, move it up.
If your image that you paste in has a smaller size than your document, that means the dots
per inch are too small for an 8.5x11.
So if you resize it to 8.5x11, it's going to become blurry.
You can't increase the size of an image that you paste into a 300 DPI document and expect
it to look good.
You can always downsize like we did with this image, though, I wanted to grab some text
from illustrator here that I already made.
It's black, but I'm going to change it to white.
So I'll hit D, and then question mark to clear this,
and copy.
And I'm going to paste this in as a Smart Object.
OK, CMD T to resize, and we're done.
So let's say I wanted to add another picture.
I downloaded a different one from Pexels, and I'm going to copy this entire picture.
CMD A, CMD C, and CMD tilda (~) to get back to my document.
And then paste.
This is a good example of one that won't print 8.5x11 In good resolution.
This is the maximum resolution you should print this picture at.
So if we resize this and make it bigger, it will become blurry when you print it.
So I'm going to undo that.
Now I can resize it and make it smaller and that's OK.
But the minute you hit return, don't make it bigger again, because you'll lose that
resolution.
It it sort of resizes itself and decreases its own resolution, if that makes sense.
But anyway, I don't really want this picture anyway, so I'm going to delete it.
Let's see...what other tips do I have for you?
OK, so let's assume this is for the web.
The reason I like to work in 300 DPI, even for web, is when the clients says "let's resize
this image," it's OK - we can resize this
a little bit, because we're in 300 dpi.
When we save at 72, it'll still look good.
But if you start in 72 DPI, and then resize it, it is not going to look
good anymore.
So definitely always work in 300 & save that as your native file.
And you can always Save for Web, which is SHIFT OPT CMD S, and here we can say whatever
size we want for the web, which would probably be about 350 x 270 or so, and it would look
perfect.
I'll go ahead and get my giraffe pictures back, and the client wants to make this a
lot bigger.
Well, we can't actually do that.
We can't increase the size by just saying, oh, let's make it 300 pixels.
It changes your pixel dimensions and everything, but it is still a bad picture.
So it's always OK to start big, from like a 450 DPI image and go to a 300 DPI image,
but it does not help you at all to go the other way around, because the loss has already
happened from 72 to say 300.
That's something to keep in mind, you'll just have to tell him to give you a better image.
Now I want to go over this cool trick that I told you about taking an image from the
web, and finding out what the maximum size you can print it at is, so I'll go back to
Pexels.
Here's the image that we saw earlier.
And I'll CTRL > Save this image.
And I'll put it right here and then pull it into Photoshop.
OK, now do OPT CMD I.
And here's where we can find this out.
Unclick Resample Image - this is the key to unclick this.
And right now it's 28 wide x 21 high at 72, but to find out what the maximum size to print
at just change the resolution to 300.
And you can see now that 6.8 x 5.1 is the maximum size this image can be.
So we'll say OK, and now when we go back in OPT CMD I, it just stays at whatever.
If you wanted to go back to what it was just change it back to 72.
So that's a really easy way to find out the maximum size you should be printing this image
at.
And that is my cool trick for the day.
I hope this video has helped you with resolution.
Please let me know if you have any questions - I'd be happy to help.
This is Anne for Graphic Design How To - please click the "Like" button if you liked this
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Thanks, guys!!!