DPI help...sending images to my editor, either he's an idiot or everyone else is, help?

Question

I am a freelance writer...I know nothing about computers really...my editor is asking me to send images via email to accompany a profile I'm writing for his magazine...he tells me to ask the people I am profiling for images which are no less than 300dpi and also in jpeg format.
So far, none of the people I've asked have been able to come up with the right thing...I'm at the end of my tether...some people say "how many pixels do they have to be?" and then the editor tells me that pixels have nothing to do with it...aaagh! I can't understand photoshop and am on a tight deadline...what can I do?

Answer 1

Its not about the number of pixels but the density of pixels.

If you are using Photoshop, go to Edit Image and you will see the resolution.

If it is lower than 300dpi, just making it higher won;t improve the quality (which is what the editor is after). Basically, he/she is after a high quality image, and the higher the dpi, the higher the resolution and the better the quality. If you only have low quality, low-res files, then you will either need to find better images, else explain that is all you have.

Start with the original image, find out the resolution (as explained above) and if its higher than 300dpi, the change it to 300 and it will make a smaller file. If its lower, then find/take a new picture and repaet the above.

Answer 2

A lot of the explanations you've gotten are probably confusing, maybe I can shed some light:

You're thinking about physical sizes, like inches, because these make sense in the physical world. In the virtual world, the pixel, which is a unit of measurement, does not have a physical size. You can set the resolution on your monitor to 800x600, or to 1024x768. All that is doing is changing the number of pixels that can fit on your monitor in the vertical and horizontal direction. Note that the size of your monitor doesn't change, it is the size of the pixel that does. So, imagine you have an image whose physical size is 5" x 5". In the computer, we can choose any number of pixels to represent per inch. Obviously, more pixels per inch (or DPI, dots per inch) means more color information per inch, and therefore higher quality. More DPI will make images appear larger on a computer screen, but keep in mind their physical size is still the same. If you're ever scanned an image, you probably notice it appears huge. This is because in order to maintain quality it scans at a high DPI setting, but if you were to print the scanned document back out it would be the same size.

In Photoshop, it's very easy to change the DPI setting. With the image open in Photoshop, go to Images -> Image Size on the menu bar. At the bottom, you should see a text field with the caption 'Resolution'. Set this to 300 to achieve 300 DPI.

Answer 3

If you aren't familiar with decent graphics software then you are on a hiding to nothing.

Your editor wants 300dpi (dots per inch) to retain the image quality when it goes to press. Most computer software (even cameras) usually saves at 72dpi.

You might just have to venture into Photoshop and increase the dpi and resave the files at 300dpi.

If you have a 2400x1200 pixel image at 120dpi then the you will achieve a print of 20"x10". If you have 2400x1200 at 300dpi you get an 8"x4" print. The image contains an identical amount of data.

Answer 4

Your editor is an idiot. JPEG files include DPI in the header and, as other say, this can be changed via such as Photoshop. He should really define the size to be printed as well or, assuming he has Photoshop or similar, just the size in pixels - 6 x 4 inches = 1800 x 1200 pixels.

Answer 5

Your ed is not an idiot. 300dpi jpeg is the standard format for images intended for publication. No-one really talks in pixels anymore. Most people involved in publishing or photography will understand this and how to attain it, so my guess is your subjects are ordinary people who aren't familiar with the terms. I get similar problems - my answer is to tell them to get someone to take a picture of them using a digital camera on its highest quality setting. Most modern cameras produce images that are jpeg or equivalent format - the 300 dpi thing just means, for your subjects' purposes, that they need to take the pic on a high (high resolution) setting. This might even mean you get more than 300dpi, which is fine anyway - the more the merrier, though you need to make sure you have an email inbox that can handle big image files.

Answer 6

Computers essentially utilizes progressive scanning to interpolate the image so that you don't see the spaces between the pixels when you look at an image on the computer screen. Sadly, the paper can't do the same thing for you when you work in print, so you need high pixel density images. Just take the best images they give and resize them in photoshop to be 300dpi using the best interpolation algorithm available(probably bicubic).

Answer 7

Depends what SIZE the image is to be.
under photoshop etc'c RESIZE function you can pix a dimesion set of x by y pixels (or CM) and a DPI setting, set this to 300DPI first.
Ask editor what SIZE they need the picture to be, if you are scanning / using a digital photo and they want it to be 5 inches square that would be 1500 pixels per side.

As long as the image meets these dimension requirements it should NOT cause work to "adjust"nthe dpi rating in the file, that is simply the graphics people being moany in my mind.

A 1500x1500 pixel image @ 300dpi is the SAME as @600dpi EXPECT that if printed at "defaults" will print twice the physical size.