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Resolution vs. Image Size?
This is a VERY noobish question, and I’m sorry for making you guys roll your eyes but I need help here! I DO know that the proper resolution for print is 300 but my question is, how do I adjust the image/ canvas (I don’t know!) size to be reasonable? when I make my document at 300dpi it makes it so huge I can only view a little part of it. I’m a motion graphics guy and what I’m trying to do is grab a frame from my After Effects project and use it as a DVD Cover. So I found the dimensions online (129mm X 184mm) entered them into my composition and exported a frame at that size. When I bring it into my 300dpi PhotoShop document its just a little tiny picture… Shouldn’t it fill up the entire canvas? so confused, can someone please help out? thanks!
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6 Replies
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try View > Actual Pixels and some of the related options near it
Also…. your resoltion is not 129 X 184
Rather convert those to incehs and MULTIPLY by 300…
129 mm = 5.07 inches
X 300 Pixels per inch
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1523 pixels acrossRichard M. Harrington, PMP
Author: Video Made on a Mac, Photoshop for Video, Understanding Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Studio On the Spot and ATS:iWork
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I did that in After Effects, and it made the comp so big all my graphics fell off, is there maybe a smaller dpi that I can use that is safe to still look “decent”?
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You can print at 200 dpi and get decent results, but I’m confused as to why 300 dpi is so unmanageable…
If your AE project is SD it certainly won’t fill up your DVD cover, but should scale up decently in Photoshop. One of the reasons to work at 300dpi in Photoshop is that the crisper text will make the blurrier graphics look more legitimate and intentional. (this BTW is why there are still photographers who take pictures for promotional material…)
So you can always export a smaller size from AE and scale up, but if you want your effects rendered at a higher resolution you should be able to make your comp larger without anything “falling off” (not sure what that means…)
Here are the dimensions I use for DVD covers. They vary slightly depending on who’s printing them, etc…
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Thank you, slowly but surely learning the world of PhotoShop, its all coming together! I’ll keep at it 🙂
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I politely recommend you pick up the aptly titled book – Understanding Adobe Photoshop.
Richard M. Harrington, PMP
Author: Video Made on a Mac, Photoshop for Video, Understanding Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Studio On the Spot and ATS:iWork
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You are on the right direction i think but have a little approach mismatch.
The thing is when you just bring to your document it will look smaller because actually making something 300dpi instead of the standard for a computer monitor 72dpi is just reducing its size like four times. (dpi is dots per inch = pixels per inch but we all know that)
If you want good quality I recommend not using the standard photoshop resize tool but some professional software as Genuine Fractals for example.
First open the image in photoshop and from image size adjust it first to 300dpi click ok the go to image size once again and then enter the pixel dimensions that you need. And when performing both operations make sure when you click the button Auto on the right (at least in CS3) the quality is set to best.
It should work fine but for such a resize you’ll loose a looot of quality when using standard photoshop tools. They work just fine for a x2 resize though 🙂
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