PPI vs DPI and Printing

kranzel · Posted: Thu Jul 24, 2008 12:29 pm Post subject: PPI vs DPI and Printing

Hello,

I am new to digital photography so forgive me if this sounds a little noobish of me.

This is my goal. A friend of mines father is an artist who has done most of his lifes work on canvas with inks and pencils.

He now wishes to scan these items in and eventually print them out in roughly 3foot by 2foot size osters.

Now, if I understand PPI and DPI correctly. PPI dtermines the actual reoslution of the picture and DPI really determines how much ink the printer will spray per inch as it prints out.

So I guess I would like to know if anyone has suggestiosn to these three questions.

1. When scanning an image in, does DPI Actually refer to PPI? If so, what DPI/PPI shoudl I scan at.

2. In photoshop cs3 does the "Pixel Demenssions" section refer to PPI and the actual DPI section refer to the DPI setting for the printer?

3. What would be the best PPI and DPI settings for printing out the 3foot by 2foot poster?

Sorry again if this sems all over the place, but I am jsut getting into this stuff.

jimpmartin · Posted: Mon Jul 28, 2008 4:17 pm Post subject: DPI vs PPI

To simplify things. You will want the greatest number of pixels you can gather. Scan the art at the highest PPI that you can.
A general rule of thumb is a file btween 250 - 300 PPI at the final print size. That will work for both Ink Jet Photo printers or commercial print.

Commercial printers are more concerned with DPI than you need to be.

Hope that's of some help.