Expert: Candice Anderson - 1/13/2009

Question
Hi!I've created an image with a width of 105mm in Photoshop and I want to use it on a A4 document in Photoshop.  Why was the 105mm image become much smaller when I drag it to the A4 document?  Shouldn't it occupy half of the A4 page?
I'm using CS2.

Answer
hi :)

Because your DPI (your resolution) is different.

Open the original photo and go to image, image size. You will notice that your picture is either 72 dpi or 180 dpi...not 300 is my point.

Now, click on the piece you worked on. image, image size. You will notice that it's probably 300dpi or 200dpi.

Let me stop for a minute. DPI, or dots per inch, is how many dots are in     your image. The more dots, or the more resolution, the better quality your picture will be when it prints out. 72 dpi is usually used for online because it's so small and good for the internet as you need small files on the internet. When you print, you need to be at about 300dpi. Sometimes you can get away with 200, but it's reccomended to be at 300.

Your picture shrank because it was set for a 72 dpi file. When you dragged it over to a 300dpi file, your picture adjusted to a 300 dpi file and thus...shrank.

If you are only doing this for online only, then just go back into images on the image your created and make it 72 dpi.

If you needed to print it....well....there's not much you can do. You can always make it bigger by scaling it (apple+T), but you will lose quality.

:)