Be Excellent To Each Other

Hi folks,

Someone wants photographs sent to them at 300dpi.

So, technical bods, I understand what ppi relates to, and thought that dpi was only used in printing. Well, OK, these images are going to be printed.

But how do I set the dpi for something they are going to print? Is that not just a setting that they see to when printing?

Secondly, to adjust the dpi to 300dpi and it be meaningful, wouldn't I need to know the finished dimensions of the image on the page? (which I don't).

Any ideas?

Yes, it's basically their problem to deal with.

You can give certain image formats a dpi attribute and it will be saved with it. But as it's a photo and the printed dimensions aren't important I'd just ignore that and send it at a decent resolution.

E.g if a typical printed photo size is 6x4, that would be 1800x1200 pixels at 300 dpi. As a guide.

The original photos I sent were 3,000 odd pixels at the widest dimension, and the finished size can't be more than about 4" wide.

Do you know how to set a dpi attribute in Photoshop before sending? If I can do that it might make them happier.

Yes, just go Image -> image size and there's a pixels per inch box. That's probably going to rescale it but

edit: ah, uncheck "resample image" maybe.

Oh, right, no. I know how to set the pixels per inch.

What I don't know how to do is how (or if) it is possible to set the Dpi for printing.

Now, I know that you will say 'but that is an attribute for the printer and you are not the printer', but they keep asking for it at 300dpi. I keep sending at 300 pixels per inch, but they want dpi, despite me saying they can set dpi at their end.

I suspect they want you to set the picture resolution equal to the printer resolution, so that it prints exactly as it appears on screen.

Sorry mimi, to me dots per inch and pixels per inch is the same thing. I think you might be dealing with someone who doesn't know what they're talking about. 50/50 chance that's me though

This is what I did, and sent at 300px per inch resolution, but they said no, this is not the same thing.

I am going to have a Dobby moment and hit myself over the head with a shoe.

Basically they're asking you to send it at a decent size, rather than say the fucking idiots who supply 72dpi thumbnail pictures of their hotels to go in our printed brochures.

So either send the original files or resample them, as others here have said from 72 - 300 dpi. They'll do all the other stuff too I'd imagine like changing the colour space etc.

I have done this. They were 3,500-odd pixels across.

Anyway, I assume they don't know what they are talking about and haven't yet handed them to the graphics dept, or the graphics dept said 'yeah, make sure she sends them at 300 dpi' and so they assume I have sent them too small.

I don't know. I'm just going to send them again their original huge size and tell them to deal with them.

Too tired.

Cheers, folks. I assumed that I was right first time, so I can just restate my point.

You can't send a file at 300dpi as dpi is an output. What you can do is know the final dimensions of the printed form and make sure the image you send matches up to that, so a 6x4" output would be a 1800x1200 pixel file, as Kalmar mentioned.

If they still moan, they haven't a fucking clue what they're on about.

They don't yet know the final dimensions of the file. I have asked but they said it hasn't been decided yet.

OK, I'll just have to assume they don't know what they are talking about.

In which case the best you can do is send them the largest images you have, which you've already been doing. So I can't really advise you on what to do, but they clearly don't know what they're talking about.

I can't see anything wrong with what you're doing.

If they reject your pictures, send the exact same pictures again in a directory called /pictures_300dpi/ with a note saying 'sorry, these ones are the 300dpi ones'.

This worked. I sent them with '300dpi' included in each file name. All fine now.

*headdesk*