Printing Export Settings

ztriola · Jun 30, 2009

what dpi do you recommend?

file type?

i am thinking about printing some portraits, mainly sizes such as 8x10 and 5x7, and i would like to know what export settings will yield the best quality results. your help is greatly appreciated.

Garbz · Jul 1, 2009

If you're really talking DPI then 4800 or as high as the printer driver will allow.

If what you are talking about is Pixels Per Inch, the resolution of the image and not the resolution of the printer, then as high as possible to with an attempt to keep an image above around 300PPI for a 6x4 or 8x10 print. Generally try to set the image dimensions without resampling the image. For a 10mpxl camera a 6x4 would be somewhere around 640PPI.

300PPI is a rule of thumb that someone with 20:20 vision will be unable to resolve pixels at arms length. It works well for images that small.

When you say file type and print export settings, what do you mean. Are you sending these out to get printed? If so only the company who is printing them can tell you what format they want. If you're talking about saving them for yourself then it makes no difference beyond picking a format / compression that gives suitable quality. I.e. if you save as JPEG keep the quality setting to maximum.

ztriola · Jul 1, 2009

oh sorry i thought ppi and dpi were the same. so for a picture shot with a 10mp camera and printed 8x10, would anywhere from 300ppi to 500ppi be appropriate?

and as far as file type, i am planning on bringing one image to a camera shop and having them make different size prints for that one picture. (a single portrait, printed in sizes ranging from wallets to 8x10ish)

thank you very much

Garbz · Jul 3, 2009

Depending on the photo store it may be best to just take the final JPEGs (which is what they will most likely use), in and say "I want 8x10 prints of these".

Pretty much every store but one I have ever used haven't cared at all about the PPI settings and had me specify the print size. This is entirely not critical for small prints. (And the one exception was a non-standard sized business card)