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What quality picture do you need?
Basically the picture quality from almost all digital cameras
will look amazing! Avoid choosing images taken from smartphones, unless your
smartphone has a decent or high megapixel capacity.
If you’re interested to learn more on digital printing, a brief
summary (technical crash-course) below will surely help:
Proper Photo Requirement
The
information below is to provide you with a better understanding of requirements
to achieving great print results.
What Print Shops Really Mean by DPI
 Okay
- your print shop/graphics designer/magazine has asked for a digital photo at
300 DPI. What do they really mean by this?
What they are really asking for is a photo that will print at a certain paper
dimension in inches at 300 pixels per inch (PPI). The term DPI is a holdover
from when this setting in a digital photo would set the paper output quality
(resolution) of a printed image (number of printer dots per inch). This is no
longer the case, but people still confuse DPI with PPI.
Back to our print shop - if they are looking for a digital photo to print at 10
inches by 8 inches, at 300 PPI, then they are really looking for a digital
image with a resolution of 3000 pixels by 2400 pixels (regardless of the DPI
setting of that image).
What
Print Shops Really Need
The
concept that 300 PPI = photographic quality is also a holdover from the quality
of printing equipment a decade ago. Present day printers will output a good
quality digital photo, with "photographic quality" at 200 PPI - so
the requirements for a 10 inch by 8 inch paper photo become a good quality
digital image with pixel dimensions of 2000 pixels by 1600 pixels.
A good quality digital photo is one:
- taken with a good
quality digital camera (good optics and digital sensor)
- a photo that has not
been enlarged either in post-processing or by in-camera digital zoom
(never (ever) use digital zoom).
- a photo that has been
properly shot (good lighting, no blur)
- a photo shot within the
camera's ideal ISO range (usually a low ISO such as ISO 100)
- a photo that has been
stored in either a lossless format (i.e. TIF) or a very low compressed
JPEG (highest camera JPEG quality setting).
Such a
photo will reproduce on paper at photographic quality (assuming current
printing technology) at 200 PPI.
This useful information has been referenced
from www.rideau-info.com/photos/printshop.html
Written by Ken Watson
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