AboutLizaL Expertise I've used Photoshop since the release of version 2. I taught college commercial art and graphic design for 10 years, and within that realm, taught Photoshop at every level, and with each successive product upgrade. My experience with Photoshop is thus extensive and well-rounded, from photo retouching to color adjustment to incorporating Photoshop and ImageReady into Web design. I am primarily a Mac user (since 1985), but am also PC-savvy.
Experience I've been a graphic designer for 22 years, was a national magazine art director, a designer for the Department of Defense, a college art instructor, and have my own freelance Web and graphic design business, LittleWorks (www.little-works.com). I've also worked for several printing companies, in both prepress and art.
Awards and Honors PICA award (Printing Industry of the Carolinas Award for the design of a media kit that accompanied a magazine I was art directing at the time)
Question I am doing work for someone and they require that I design and submit it using a minimum(sorry if spelling is off) of 300 dpi resolution sized to scale Photoshop PSD file. I am currently a graphics major, but still have am not sure what this means exactly. How would I go about setting up my new project so that it meets that requirement? I've worked with Photoshop for awhile I am just still learning. If it matters I use Photoshop 7. Thanks for any help you can give me.
Dave
Answer HI again Dave,
First off, thanks for the positive feedback! Glad I could help.
But I read your comment and realized I could have addressed the whole ppi and dpi issue.
Pixels per inch, or ppi, is used to describe the number of pixels along the height and width of an image. These are the pixel dimensions of an image, the pixels you see on your screen. So you could consider this the screen resolution of an image, or its pixel size.
Dots per inch, or dpi, refers to printer resolution. So if someone wants something created or sized at 300dpi, they're actually talking about the resolution at which it will print. Naturally, the higher the dpi, the denser the pixels, and the bigger the file size.
Regarding the Photoshop Image Size dialog box, the top half refers to pixels per inch -- that is, what you see on the screen. But that number directly correlates to the printed resolution, which is below, in the Document Size area of the dialog box.
Lines per inch, or lpi, is a little different; this refers to screen frequency, which is the number of printer dots or halftone cells per inch used to print the image. For instance, a newspaper might be printed at 75 lpi; a magazine is typically around 133 lpi.
I hope this makes sense, and if it doesn't, please let me know!
Thanks again,
Lisa
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Hi Dave,
To change or set your resolution in Photoshop, just go to the Image pulldown menu. You'll see a dialog box that gives you the option of not only specifying resolution, but changing the image size as well, both in terms of output, and viewing onscreen.
Now to create a new document that has 300dpi, go to File, select New, and at that point you'll be able to specify your resolution as 300.
To make changes to an existing document, go to the Image pulldown menu and select Image Size, and you can make your changes there.
Of course, if you're going to do something "to scale," you need to know what the finished size is expected to be, and work at a scale that is complementary. For instance, if the finished piece is supposed to be 12 inches wide, and you're working at a scale of 1/2, you'll need to do your work 6 inches wide. Then the file can be printed at twice its original size, in order to obtain the needed size.
I'm sure you knew this, but thought I'd just throw it in since you mentioned it in your question :-)
Hope this helps! Please post back if you need any more info.
