How do I change my dpi?

[Todd Ovick]

According to a book i have been reading, inkjet matte/luster/glossy paper recommended output settings are all at 240ppi or 360ppi, with inkjet glossy also at 480ppi. the book is "The creative Digital Darkroom" and they primarily reference Photoshop CS3. maybe check with the magazine if 300 ppi is their minimum resolution for print. Of course, they are probably not using an inkjet printer but you want your photos to really look good in that magazine.

[neuroanatomist]

According to a book i have been reading, inkjet matte/luster/glossy paper recommended output settings are all at 240ppi or 360ppi, with inkjet glossy also at 480ppi.

They are not using inkjet printing. Professional printing is offset printing. Standard minimum resolutions for offset printing are 300 dpi for images, 600 dpi for combinations of line art and images (e.g. pictures with labels), and 1200 dpi for line art (e.g. graphs, etc.).


Normally, figures/images are printed at 1 column (3"), 1.5 column (4.5"), or full-width (6", 2 column) size. Ideally, you would know ahead of time the final print size, and produce your image accordingly.


The 40D produces3888 x 2592 images. That's sufficient for a 13" width at 300 dpi - far wider than a magazine format. Having said that, the production editors know what they're doing. If they ask for a 300 dpi image, give them a 300 dpi image. They will take it from there.

[Keith B]

It shouldn't be an issue, page layout programs will scale images based on pixel count. For example, if your image is saved as 240dpi and the designer places the image (by default it comes in at 100%) and scales it down to 50% the image will print at 480dpi. InDesign will let the designer know the pixel depth in the Info palette. But most designers don't understand dpi that well and just know someone told them somewhere along the line that images have to be at least 300dpi.


300dpi is based on 12 pixels per millimeter which was deemed the print standard. If you want to be technical about it it is actually 304.8dpi. So you could trip out the designers and save them at that. More than likely they don't know why it would be that.


200dpi is where the human eye can start resolve that an image is made up of blocks of color so the extra 100 (104.8) pixels are safety nets. Most printers preflights won't send of warnings until the image is stretch beyond the 200dpi threshold.


But to appease the designers do what most mentioned, image size, make sure Resample is off.