PRINT RESOLUTION VS. SCREEN RESOLUTION There is always confusion as people start working in Photoshop concerning print resolution which is at LEAST 250, and generally 300 PPI. Screen resolution which is 72 PPI. This is a very important point to understand, so we’ll review it again.

The place to see your PPI settings is IMAGE > IMAGE SIZE .

Note: Just in case you haven’t already figured out this shorthand way of getting around PHotoshop, I capitalize the menu paths to make them more clear. So FILTER > DISTORT > SHEAR means you go to the FILTER pull-down menu at the top of your Photoshop screen, go to DISTORT, and then go to SHEAR.

Okay, so back to the subject: go to IMAGE > IMAGE SIZE.

Your pixel dimensions are at the top and tell you how many of those little tiny squares make up your image. (File size above those two numbers will adjust as you change size.)

The print size gives you the dimensions of your image as it will be PRINTED. The RESOLUTION tells you how many of those little square pixels are used in every inch.

Below are two boxes: one for constraining the proportions of the image, or keeping the height exactly relative to the width. If this is checked than your height will automatically change when you change the width and vice versa.

The last box is the RESAMPLE box. If you check this and change the size in any of the boxes above it, then you will be changing the number of overall pixels in the image. If you uncheck this box, then you can subtract or add pixels to your image. BEWARE: adding pixels is bad. It is always bad and always to be avoided if pos-sible. Sometimes, we’re stuck and have to, but avoid resampling UP (or adding pixels) whenever possible. Bicubic is the best way to resample and all that means it that Photoshop looks at the most number of pixels surrounding the pixel to be added or sub-tracted in order to determine the color to throw away or bring in.

There is one more option and that is the AUTO button. This button lets you put in a LINE SCREEN or LPI setting and it will automati-cally size the image for you. You will, of course, have to put in the print dimensions, because this simply gives you the right resolu-tion for a print file. It will give you three quality options, and for the most part you should always choose BEST quality. Draft resolution gives you SCREEN resolution, or 72 PPI, better gives you 1.5 times the LPI or line per inch number, and is okay if your file doesn’t have to be great, but the BEST setting gives you 2 times the LPI or the actual resolution that you should print at.

You have to be very cautious about resampling UP. Avoid it whenever there is ANY other choice.

A LITTLE MORE ABOUT PIXELS PER INCH:

This graphic shows you what pixels per inch really means. In the first red and white INCH, you have a 2 pixels per inch resolution and in the inch to the far right, you have 128 pixels per inch. All photoshop files are made up of pixels or squares of solid color information. The detail you get, as well as your sense of smooth-

ness, depends on how many pixels per inch. To look smooth on the computer monitor, you will need a resolution or Pixels Per Inch or PPI setting of 72 PPI. For print you want to be up in the 250 to 300 PPI range.

All this extra information for print is wonderful, but remember that PHotoshop stores a little packet of information for each and every pixel so the more pixels, the bigger the file size.....hence, the longer your filters will take, the more RAM you will need to accomplish things, etc.

If you don’t have enough resolution for printing, like when you snag a picture off the web and try to use it in a print project, then you will start to notice the quality going down greatly. Your printer will smooth things out a bit, but it certainly won’t do as good a job as if you had the right resolution to start with.

TOO MUCH RESO-LUTION:Resolution isn’t like being rich or thin. YOU CAN HAVE TOO MANY PIXELS! You should not be printing things out at 600 or 1200 PPI. All this does is add file size, not quality. Be aware if what the finished size of your image will be so you can

scan at the right resolution.

CANVAS size is the other option under IMAGE > CANVAS SIZE that controls file size. This is very simply the outside dimensions of your image. If you make the canvas size smaller, you trim off pixels at the edge of your canvas. If you make is larger, you add pixels to the outer edges of you canvas. If you image is flattened or you have a background layer, you added pixels will be added in the background color. If you don’t have a back-ground layer, then your pixels will be added as transparent area around you image.

File size tip: Do a select ALL and crop to get rid of excess image you can’t see.