Resolution for printing

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In my city, there are some shops which provides services of printing digital photo on photo paper, i.e. like traditional film photo printing. I want to know if I only print 3R or 4R size, which resolution should I choose? 1280 x 960 or 1600 x 1200?

Thanks.

-- Chris Ho (chrisho@eclasia.com), May 30, 2000

Answers

go with the largest resolution you have. 1600X1200 translates to just over a 5X7 at 300dpi, which is a good print resolution

-- Jonathan Ratzlaff (jonathanr@clrtech.bc.ca), May 30, 2000.

You should be looking at the pixels-per-inch that you can get from your camera to the print. Generally, 150 ppi would give photo-like prints, 200 ppi would allow you to get prints that are better than every day photos (assuming you do simple touch up of the images before printing), and 300 ppi is the point that any more would just be wasteful.

At 150ppi, 1280 x 960 would be good for 8.5" x 6.4" prints, and 1600 x 1200 would give you 10.7" x 8".

For flexibility, of course, you would be better off to always use the highest resolution of your camera. Up to a point, the more pixels, the better, especially that you would lose some pixels when there is need to crop.

-- Jonathan (JonathanFung@Home.com), May 31, 2000.


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