What
is Resolution? This is an often asked question and can be a
little puzzling in the digital and media world.
Your
image is made up with a collection of dots, in short dpi - dots
per inch. The dpi is the number of dots in a square inch
(2.54 cm square). These dots carry information about brightness
and colour. The density of the dots is called 'Resolution'
and resolution determines the amount of detail your image will
contain. The higher the resolution the more detail your image
will have; the lower the resolution, the detail will be less. Low
resolution images lack detail, colour and brightness resulting in
poorer quality.
If
you double the resolution of your image it will be four times
greater. For example: 300dpi image doubled to 600dpi will
produce a very large image, however the output will still be
300dpi. If data is too large, the processing time will slow
significantly and you'll experience that irritating problem of lack of
memory. Ensure your resolution matches the purpose of your
project and is set it accordingly to a lower level. If you are
scanning images (photographs) for your PC then scanning at
150dpi is a good level. For printing use a level of
300dpi or more. Remember, the higher the resolution the better
the quality but larger the image.
If
you are doing a project painting it is always advisable to use a
resolution of no less than 150dpi. My personal preference is
300dpi. Save the original high quality resolution image
preferably as a .TIFF (see
File Format information) for no compression. Your image can
easily be changed to a lower resolution and optimised to a .jpg or
.gif for transporting via e-mail or over the web.
