Screen Quality vs. Print Quality, is there a difference? Absolutely!
Screen quality is 72dpi (dots per inch) whereas print quality is 300dpi. The higher the number, the sharper the image. When you see pictures that seem to be made up of a lot of squares, that’s called pixelated and is the result of increasing an image’s size beyond it’s capability to produce a sharp image.
This is also called resolution and the higher the resolution, 300dpi, the larger the file size. Therefore, if an image is going to be used for email, screen viewing (Facebook, websites, etc), then it pays to lower the resolution, thereby decreasing the file size. The trouble is that folks that don’t know the difference try to print images that were formatted for the screen and it produces poor results. Often, they don’t understand why.
Screen Quality Image
Printed Image
Pixelated image
If you’re still with me and you want to understand more, there are a fixed number of dots to an image that equate to the number of dots of ink laid down on the paper. Convert that to digital and the dots of ink become squares, or pixels. Again, the number of pixels is fixed. If you have an image that is 72dpi, or pixels per square inch, that is 4×6 inches, it will be viewable with great clarity on the screen. But if you were to convert that to 300dpi for print quality, your resulting image would be 1.44x.96 inches because the number of dots/squares doesn’t change. If, however, you increase the dimension of the same image to print a 4×6 image, remember that the number of squares is fixed, the size of each of those squares must get larger which results in the pixelated appearance described above.
If you remember nothing else here, understand that an image can always be made smaller without losing quality. However, any increase in size or resolution, will result in a proportionate loss of quality.
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“Tech Tuesday” is published every Tuesday. To reach Tracy with comments or questions, email her here.
