photo editing (1 Viewer)

Most photo's need something....I take my shots at the largest setting so they are huge. When I look at Elements it will give me a default of 72 dpi and again, huge settings in cm or inches etc.

When you edit photos, either for sharpness, or shadows etc....is it best to 'first reduce' image size from the huge settings and increase dip to 150 or so, and then do the sharpness...saving being the last thing you do.

Or...do you simply do sharpness on the image as is, play with it, perhaps do shadows or light etc.... followed by reducing image size..saving last.

Do you save with High DPI ? 150 or higher.... Thanks in advance, jim

Are you getting confused with the pixel dimensions and the dpi of the intended use?

The pixel dimensions 3000x2000 or what ever how big the picture is, this can be set on the camera. You can decrease this in your editing program by discarding pixels in a crop or my resampling the image so that the picture is shrunk to fit into the new pixels. You can also increase the pixel size, but only by the program adding extra ones and guessing as to their value.

Most image editing programs will also give you the output size in inches or cms. This figure depends on you telling the computer what you want to use it for. Different uses need a different amount of pixels per inch (ppi), (some programs call it dots per inch (dpi)). For screen use most programs say 72 ppi , most modern monitors are actually about 100ppi. For print use commercial printers ask for 300 ppi, but you can get reasonable results on an inkjet with 150 ppi. You can change the intended ppi and thus the given cm or inch dimensions without changing the pixel dimensions of the image.

Any manipulations you do on an image are done to the pixels and the effect you get depends on the pixel dimensions not the putative size, of the "print".

Try a little experiment. Take a photo and save a copy it at 10 dpi, then save another copy at 1000 dpi. Now view each image. Can you see any difference? No - because dpi is meaningless until you come to print an image.

As others have said, dpi is completely meaningless unless you print the image. What you SHOULD be paying attention to is the pixels in the image - i.e. the width and height of the image in pixels. This is what it's all about. As mentioned above, a 3000 x 2400 pixel image set to 72 dpi or set to 200 dpi, or whatever, is the same image. It is the 3000 x 2400 that is important.

You may be getting confused because the resize/resample dialog allows you to change the number of pixels in an image by changing the dpi setting. This is totally misleading and you really shouldn't do it that way. If you want to change the pixel size of an image, change the pixel count or do it by %.

Thanks....I learned 'another thing'....I am still on that learning curve ;-)

RAH said:

As others have said, dpi is completely meaningless unless you print the image. What you SHOULD be paying attention to is the pixels in the image - i.e. the width and height of the image in pixels. This is what it's all about. As mentioned above, a 3000 x 2400 pixel image set to 72 dpi or set to 200 dpi, or whatever, is the same image. It is the 3000 x 2400 that is important.

You may be getting confused because the resize/resample dialog allows you to change the number of pixels in an image by changing the dpi setting. This is totally misleading and you really shouldn't do it that way. If you want to change the pixel size of an image, change the pixel count or do it by %.

Click to expand...

So if I save an image to my website at default 72dpi and then want to print a copy, can I bring the image back to Photoshop (still using Elements 2) reset the dpi to 300 and print? Or will this cause problems as I do not use RAW but JPEG?

Cheers

You should first COPY your original. Then do whatever you want to the copy - and you will always have the original as it came out of the camera. NEVER edit your originals.

rezMole said:

You should first COPY your original. Then do whatever you want to the copy - and you will always have the original as it came out of the camera. NEVER edit your originals.

Click to expand...

Cheers:t:

I am having a senior (also working nights moment). My originals are all on DVD so I can copy across to photoshop, complete the resolution change and not have the original changed. Simple really but when tired ..................!!!

Hippo said:

So if I save an image to my website at default 72dpi and then want to print a copy, can I bring the image back to Photoshop (still using Elements 2) reset the dpi to 300 and print? Or will this cause problems as I do not use RAW but JPEG?

Cheers

Click to expand...

In fact, although we've been saying all along in this thread that the dpi setting is only meaningful when you PRINT something, even when you print it is pretty meaningless nowadays. This is because when you print something in most image editors (Elements included), you are usually presented with a print dialog screen that allows you to set the size it will print at, among other things (e.g. center of page, upper left corner, fill the page, etc). So generally, there is no reason to set the dpi ever.

If you do decide to set the dpi before printing by using the resize dialog (again, there is no point in doing this), you further run the danger of forgetting to UNCHECK the resample checkbox. If you forget, you will really resize the image via resample, which will throw away (or add bogus) pixels to your image, which you absolutely do not want to do. So, it is best to stay away from the resize dialog unless you really want to resize - for example, making images small for web display.