The Trick To Resizing Digital Camera Images for Print
Hi Gang: I thought I’d kick off this Monday by answering a question I was asked over on my Twitter page:
To answer John’s question, the first thing we have to get over is the age-old myth that you need to print at 300 dpi. For today’s ink-jet printers you need a minimum of around 200 ppi (and people love to argue this next figure endlessly) but most of the pros I know who are seriously into printing feel that the “sweet spot” resolution for today’s printers is 240 ppi, and anything above that doesn’t give you a better print (just a larger file size).
I print at 240 ppi max, sometimes less, but I personally don’t print at a higher ppi than 240 ever (by the way; that’s Lightroom’s default printing resolution as well). If you want to argue about resolution, feel free to go find a printing forum and have at it — I really didn’t want to host that debate here, but John asked me and I’m answering him (based on how I do it) here because I know some other folks might have similar questions. To make it easier I did a short video on two different ways to use Photoshop to get the size and resolution you want (since Lightroom does all this math automatically under the hood). Here ya go:
I hope you found that helpful.
Photoshop CC’s “Two Install” issue
Those of you who installed last week’s Photoshop CC update (the one called “The 2014 update of Photoshop CC” – ugh), have learned that it left your old Photoshop CC there and installed a new separate version. Terry White did a post about the hows and why and what to do with your extra copy over on his tech blog.
By the way, did I mention that Terry actually works for Adobe as their worldwide evangelist (I think he’s worked there around 14 or so years now) and he would love to hear your comments (his words) over on his tech blog, so if for any reason you’re unhappy, grumpy, or perhaps you’re happy, cheerful and full of glee, here’s the link to Terry’s blog — that’s Terry “the human pin cushion” White from Adobe Systems where you are going straight to the source directly, fully and totally unfettered (whatever unfettered means).
That’s it for today!
Hope you all have an awesome Monday and we’ll see ya back here tomorrow. :)
Best,
-Scott