I'm sure this has been asked somewhere else.

What dpi are you all designing in?

Are you designing at 72 dpi and then sizing up to 300 dpi for printing or are you designing at 300 dpi to start with?

I've been designing at 300 dpi but I read in Photoshop 911 yesterday that you can design at 72 dpi and then size up to 300 dpi.

If you are designing for print quality then you need to size at 300 dpi for the best output. Myself, I start off at that level...I'm not certain if you designed at 72 dpi if you could then upsize...that would be interesting though because it would make tons faster during the development process.

Maybe one of the guru's here can help us out.

Thanks,
Elizabeth

I use ULead PhotoImpact XL. I used to design at 72, but I now strictly design at 250, any more and my computer just dies (until I get more memory! ) Hopefully Jacquel will jump in here, but I had the same question way back when and was told to design in the higher DPI and then lower it to post, save or whatever. The difference is quite noticable, for me anyway. I do all my designing, then save at that size in case I want to make future changes, then I go to format, and resize the image and all objects, and reduce the res to about 96. This way you don't lose much quality when saving in JPEG format to upload to the gallery here. Seems to work for me! Maybe the "pros" here will expand on this! I just go with what works for me!

Holly
hm1204

72 is good for email or web but terrible to print. Enlarging makes for poorer quality. Better to reduce than to enlarge.

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Kim

Designing at 300 is best. What I have read about designing at 72 is that it's good if you are just playing around with layout ideas as it's much faster to do. But then you need to actually do the LO again at 300, resizing it up is no good.

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Leah

I know I have explained this somewhere else but let me try here...

dpi is a derived measurement - it means dots per inch. The reason we choose the magic number of 300 dpi is to match our printer capability and get the best quality printed page we can. I've tried at 200 dpi and there is a difference. I've tried higher, and there is no difference - at least to my eye.

I make pages that are 8 by 8 inches. At 300 dpi they are 2400 by 2400 pixels. Now the number of pixels is important since your printer prints dot by dot, or pixel by pixel. If you have any less than that the printer [and software] compensates. Perhaps they have more dots of the same colour or it guesses what the colours should be in between - either way you will most definitely notice this at 72 dpi if you want your layout to still be the original size.

It is not a good idea to start at 72 dpi. With my 8 by 8 inch layout this means the number of pixels is 576 by 576. It might look good on the screen but so few pixels on a printer is going to make my page look very disappointing indeed.

Hope this helps. Remember - it is total number of pixels that counts, not dpi.

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Jacqueline
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