Copy and Pasting in Photoshop Elements -- shrinking?!?

Question

I'm trying to copy and paste a logo design onto a new document but everytime I paste, the logo is extremely tiny. The original size of the logo in its on document is about 500 px wide... when I paste it onto a 2500 px wide document, it has automatically resized to about 50 px wide. What can I do about this?

Answer 1

You are pasting onto a document with a different resolution size than the original logo design.

The size of the document changes with the resolution size. The pixel count can stay the same, but for instance - when you go from a 72 dpi document that is 100 pixels by 100 pixels to a 300 dpi document that is 100 by 100 pixels, the 300 dpi image is bigger.

I hope I explained it well enough.

I am a graphic designer, and work with PhotoShop everyday. If I can help any further, email me (my info is in my profile) and I'll try to help you.

Good luck.

Answer 2

that's because the resolution is drastically different, which is the main reason why non-vector based logos are a no-no.

What's happening is the logo, in its own document, may be 500 pixels wide, put the resolution is so low, like 72 ppi, that when you bring it into a document that is high resolution, like your 2500 pixel wide document, it'll appear as it should when placed in a document that's higher resolution, which means, it'll shrink. If you change the resolution of the 2500 pixel wide document to match that of the logo, when you copy and paste there will be no resizing or resampling going on there.

Don't pay attention to what pixel dimensions your documents are, it means nothing here, and its only secondary to what resolution your documents are.

You need to know resolution inside and out if you want to design stuff or put together layouts in a raster based program like Photoshop Elem. or something similar.

To start you off, remember that pixels can vary in size (basically). Images can be 72 to 96 ppi (pixels per inch), when they are that size it means that for every inch, there are 72 to 96 pixels that make up the image (might be what your logo is).

So in your other document (thats 2500), the resolution might be 300ppi. So if this new document has 300 pixels in an inch, and you try to paste something that's 72 pixels in an inch, it'll size the 72 pixels down to match that new document. If you roughly understand algebra then you should get it. 300 ppi = 1 inch, 72 ppi = .25 inches.

So again, if you want to have it pasted correctly, you can change the resolution of that 2500 pixel document to match the logo document. And when you copy and paste the size won't change. But remember that lower resolution files lose detail when they get printed, but they look great on your screen or on the internet.