[Richard Lutz] “I just looked at his settings and they are CMYK and 300 DPI. After converting to RGB I tried importing things but I feel like I’m losing my image quality in the process. Everything just seems pixelated.”
DPI doesn’t matter to AE — pixels do.
DPI is dots per inch. You can have a 300 DPI image, but if it’s only one inch square, it’s only 300 by 300 pixels and won’t look good stretched to full screen in a standard definition comp, let alone a high-def comp. Contrariwise, a 72 DPI image that 36×24 inches wide would yield 2,592×1,728 — plenty big enough.
AE tells you the resolution of the image in the project panel — just select one of the images and look next to the thumbnail.
Other possible culprits: draft mode in AE or pixel aspect ratio correction (which looks jagged in the viewer, but actually renders cleanly).
Walter Soyka
Principal & Designer at Keen Live
Motion Graphics, Widescreen Events, Presentation Design, and Consulting
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