Creating Images for Print and for the Web

When creating or looking for digital images, it is very important to know how the image is going to be used. If an image is going to be displayed on a website, it is generally going to be shown at 72 pixels per inch (ppi). But if the image is going to be used in print media, the typical resolution is 300 dots per inch (dpi)*.

The means that image that 360 pixels wide will be 5 inches wide on a web page, but will only be 1.2 inches wide when added to a print document.

A 360 pixel image added to a 10 inch canvas @ 72ppi takes up approximately 25% of the canvas

The same image added to a 10 inch canvas @ 300dpi appears much smaller

Although the image is the same size (360 x 360 pixels) the resolution of the canvas has an obvious effect on the image. If we were to scale the image up, it would become pixelated and this would look unprofessional.

Therefore, we need to ensure that we work with the correct sized images from the outset and bear in mind that if the image is to be used in print media, we will need much higher resolution images.

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*When describing screen density, we use pixels per inch (ppi). and when measuring print density we use dots per inch (dpi). However the terms are often interchangeable and may be used to refer to both. Although it is possible to measure density in pixels or dots per centimetre, the industry standard is inches.