Maximizing your online space…
Do you know what DPI stands for?
In the photographic and printing world it stands for Dots Per Inch.
You may have heard that term before - especially when you tried to print out an image using any online printing company like Snapfish, Costco, Shutterfly, Walmart, etc.
When you are working with photos and other types of images, you are dealing with dots per inch. This is a way to measure how many little bits of color can be squeezed into one inch. This is not to be confused with pixels per inch because each pixel holds three dots of color - red, blue and green. There are actually three times more dots per inch than pixels per inch according to this Wikipedia article.
When you are printing a photo you usually want it to have a high DPI of around 300. That’s kind of the standard. This will make your photo look better. It will have more depth, richer colors and usually have smoother skin tones. You can have a higher DPI than that but it usually isn’t necessary and it also depends on what kind of printer will be used. Different printers have different DPI capabilities.
When you are posting photos online, it doesn’t need to be very high. A DPI of 72 works just fine. The reason for this is that the standard for monitors is 72 DPI. Basically, most monitors won’t show you any detail higher than 72 DPI.
So for you bloggers out there, uploading your photos at 72 DPI is a really good idea. This will make it possible for you to upload more photos and take up more space with all the good stuff you want to share because you aren’t filling up all your space with giant photos.
This is actually something that I was not doing before. I just realized that I wasn’t paying any attention to that kind of thing and so I have been wasting my hosting space because of that. Now I am going to upload every photo at 72 DPI and save myself some room. Yay me! :)
Can you see a difference in these photos and any photos in previous posts? I venture to say that you can’t. In fact, check out the two versions of the Chicken photo below. One is 72 DPI and the other is 300 DPI. The only difference is that the 72 DPI version is only 228 kb and the 300 DPI is 1.2 mb. That’s a big size difference. I could put nearly 5 times the photos in the same space as the 1.2 mb photo.
Gar & the Rooster at 72dpi
Gar & the Rooster at 300dpi
So the Momshot Tip for today is to lower your resolution to 72 DPI before uploading your photos online. This will save you space and not compromise the integrity of your photos to those viewing them on a computer monitor.
September 12th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
I just figured that out also…and I know it will be a good thing to remember when I get an actual dotcom site!
I love your MomShots…I’ve tried quite a few of your tricks and I appreciate you allowing me in to all your secrets!
September 12th, 2008 at 5:51 pm
Personal experience and tip from the peanut gallery!
The resolution doesn’t really come into effect unless you are printing (or storing). If you set your photo size to a reasonable viewing size i.e. 3×5 then when viewing on the screen the ppi isn’t really a problem, because the photo will never show bigger than 3×5, unless of course you are worried about the (kb, mb) storage/upload size of the image. I personally never mess with the resolution, I leave it alone, and just use physical size to make my images smaller for the web, because I want the highest viewing quality I can get.
Also, the resolution also pertains to the individuals monitor resolution settings, most LCD monitors come standard at a higher resolution than the old bulky monitors of yester-year, and it is because of this broad specturm of potential resolution settings that I adjust ONLY the size of the photo, not the resolution.
Awesome distinction between dpi and ppi, we get a TON of people who are confused by this!