How do you change the resolution to 300dpi in Photoshop CC
Overview
Daniel Scott
Founder of Bring Your Own Laptop & Chief Instructor
instructorI discovered the world of design as an art student when I stumbled upon a lab full of green & blue iMac G3’s. My initial curiosity around using the computer to create ‘art’ developed into a full-blown passion, eventually leading me to become a digital designer and founder of Bring Your Own Laptop.
Sharing and teaching are a huge part of who I am. As a certified Adobe instructor, I've had the honor of winning multiple Adobe teaching awards at their annual MAX conference. I see Bring Your Own Laptop as the supportive community I wished for when I was first starting out and intimidated by design. Through teaching, I hope to bring others along for the ride and empower my students to bring their stories, labors of love, and art into the world.
True to my Kiwi roots, I've lived in many places, and currently, I reside in Ireland with my wife and kids.
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Hi there, it's real me back again for a little bit. This particular video is about resolution in Photoshop. What I'm going to do is jump between this live head shot stuff and the screen there, because it's a little easier to explain when I wave my hands around. Let's get started, we'll get started with the screen stuff and then we'll come back. Let's go do that.
So let's open up two files, let's go to 'File', 'Open'. In your 'Exercise Files' there's one called 'Color modes & Resolution'. I want you to open up these two, 'Resolution 01' and '02' by Hunter Johnson. Let's click open. So one is a teeny tiny version and one is a nice big version. So resolution is just another word for quality. Good quality, bad quality, high resolution, low resolution. Another word for resolution is pixels per inch or dots per inch, dpi, ppi. I'm blowing your mind with different words. Let's stick to resolution. High and low quality.
So this one here, I'm looking at 02, is low quality. It's because when I zoom in, this actually-- you'll actually start to see, look, it's actually made up of little squares. So an image is just a collection of colored dots, but from a distance, if I zoom out far enough, it looks like a proper legit image. And that's true of both good and bad quality. So I can see the dots quite easily in this low resolution, low quality version, but now, it looks like a proper legit real life from front of the image, But that's because my brain can't see when I zoom in. If I zoom in far enough, can you see, it's actually, this one here is just made up of more dots, and my little brain can't tell the difference between real life and, like lots of little cubes joined together at a certain resolution.
So let's jump out to live head Dan now, and let's talk about two kind of example projects. So what we'll do is talk about two kind of common projects or uses, for resolution in Photoshop. We'll do a kind of a web job and a print job. We'll start with the web one, because it's probably what you're going to do most often, I'm guessing. So let's say that we've been given a specific size we need for a website. Let's say it's to our WordPress blog, and it has to have a maximum size of 1200 pixels wide. Or it's some sort of social media. So Instagram has a maximum image size of 1600 pixels wide. Or your Twitter Bio needs to be-- you see those requirements that says cannot be larger than XYZ. 2,000 pixels, so we're going to go and do that now, and look at how to force our image to be a specific size for a web project. Let's jump in.
So I want to go to 'Image', and adjust my 'Image Size'. Now they may or may not ask for it, but the resolution needs to be at 72. And this little check, Resample Image needs to be turned 'on'. Over here, depending on that-- they might have asked for centimeters, you can adjust it just as easily in here. I'm using pixels because that's what my Twitter Bio asked for, and let's say it's 1600 across. So it's 1600, was the largest size. It's adjusted the height for me proportionately. Awesome. It's 72 dots per inch, I'm clicking 'OK', it's a lot smaller. Do a 'File', 'Save As JPEG', and upload that to Twitter, or Instagram, or Reddit, or whatever the site is that needs a specific size.
So 72 is a really common resolution. Let's talk about the slightly more complicated print version. Let's jump back out to real Dan. All right, it's time for a print job, so we've been asked to, say we're photographer and we're working in Photoshop, getting our image right, but then somebody's asked us for a version of our image for a print job. And they've asked for a couple of things. You might be given a spec sheet, or they might have emailed it to you, and they've said, "We need your image to be in CMYK," which we looked in the last video. And we need it to be, let's say 300 dpi. Or they might say ppi. dpi and ppi are interchangeable terms, remember, dots per inch, pixels per inch. Old school, new school, 300 dpi, they're the same. I say dpi because that's what I learned but Photoshop calls it ppi. You'll find a bit of both around. So it's 300 dpi, and they haven't asked for, they just asked for as big as it can be, at 300 dpi. Let's say that's one of our project.
The next project is CMYK, but we need it at a specific size. So it needs to be 18 inches across at 300 dpi, so it's really specific. So let's look at both of those scenarios now in the screencast. So we're back in here, I'm going to undo to go back to my original image. So I've worked on this image, I've photographed it, it's great. I need to get it to CMYK, which we know how to do in the last video. Great. CMYK, perfect, and now I need it to be 300 dpi or ppi. So go to 'Image', let's go to 'Image Size'. And what we want to do in this case is we want to turn Resample 'off'. Because what ends up happening is, watch this, if I change this 72, so let's say, we work in inches, so there's 68 inches. So what I need to do is change this from 72 which is the really common web size, to the really common print size, which is 300. Watch what happens to the width and height. '300'.
You got a whole lot smaller, it went from 68 down to 16, oh no. Let's jump to real Dan to explain. So now it's time I get to wave my arms, and I find this is the best way to explain that kind of weird resizing going on. So for a screen or for a website, they want 72 dots per inch. And we look at it on a screen, and it looks great, that's all you need, 72 dots in an inch. Let's say I've got an inch, here it is, there's 72 little cubes in there. All colored dots, and that is my-- my little human brain goes, "That looks perfect." But when it gets to print, they need a lot more dots for a realistic print. If you print stuff at 72 you start to see the dots, just the techniques that you used to go through printing. It just looks bad, so to get past that, to get to that really good quality, they pick it up and go, "That's a photograph." You need 300 little dots in that same inch. So 72 dots per inch means I've got an inch, there's 72 little dots. If I want 300 in there what we have to do is, it's the same inch, right, but we have to say, "Well I want some more pixels to fit in there," where do we get them from?
So we go, well there's all these other pixels around, so let's start dragging them. Paul, you come in here, you come in here, you keep jamming them in there, there's a hundred in there now. Now there's 200, you keep pulling them, juggling them in. And then eventually you cram 300 into that same inch. The trouble is, you have to pull all those pixels out from the rest of the image. The whole image has to resize to come down. So basically you're grabbing all those cubes, just crushing them so they're more dense. Does that help? That's the best way I can explain it.
So that's the trade-off, right? Is that, 72, great for screen. Print, it needs to be about the third of the original size. It's not perfect but it's about the right kind of ratio. So that's why the physical size gets smaller. So, full stop, that's that done. Let's say you-- remember our second step, where we said-- so the first step was, put it at 300, and just give it to us at whatever size it ends up being. But let's say that we want it to be an exact size. So you want to be 300 dots per inch, but we need it to be 20 inches across. And we saw before that it can't be 20, it's 16, 19? It's not that big. So let's go and work out how to force Photoshop to kind of make it the size we need, and they're kind of trade-offs for that, so back to screen.
So before, remember, was 72, really big, we changed it to 300 and you're like, "Oh no, it's heaps smaller." That's just the size it is, that's the best quality it can be. 300 dpi, it's only going to be 16 inches across. Let's say I'm just going to turn this on, we did this before, so 300, and it's a 68. What's going to end up happening, can you see over here, it gives you a preview. See the goop that appears. Photoshop says, "Well, I'm just going to generate all these extra pixels." And it tries its best, but there's just too much to do, and you end up with this kind of goopiness. You've probably seen it in images before. It's Photoshop, it does, it's the best thing to try and do it, but the images are not there, so it just starts duplicating pixels willy-nilly and you end up with this kind of interpolation stuff.
So huge jumps like that just don't work. What you can do though is-- let's turn that off. So remember, 16 is the largest it can be, but let's say we just needed to be 18, or let's say 17, we just need to be a little bit bigger. Nobody's going to notice. Turn Resample 'on', change it to '17'. You see here, it's no better no worse than it was before, in my opinion. Can I go up to 18? Probably I'd still do it. Put an update, if they say it needs to be 18 at 300, I'll probably do it, because it was close enough to it. So when you start getting over this, like when you get past the 10 to 15% increase, you start to see pixels, and it starts to look a little bit bad. The further you get over that, the worse it gets, like we saw before.
So this little resample image here, with it off it will be exactly 72. It's going to expand out to the nice big size, because that's all the internet needs, but when I get to 300, shrinks down. I can turn this on to force it to be a physical size. Making it smaller, it's perfect. Say they need it to be 10 inches. That's great. There's plenty of pixels to go for smaller, but to get bigger you can go a little bit bigger but not too much.
All right, back to our other Dan. I hope that was helpful. If you are like, "Man, that was really hard," it was really hard. So resolution can be tough. Take aways, I hope, are web stuff is at 72 dots per inch, you can have it larger. Anything that goes to print is going to be about a third of the size. You just go to 'Image', 'Image Size'. Make sure Resample is 'off', type in '300' pixels per inch. And that will give you the print size at its very best quality. If you need to force it to be a size, doesn't really matter if it's for web or print, just turn the Resample 'on'. And with that on it will force it to be whatever you tell it to be. And if you're going smaller, perfect. If you're going bigger, it's going to start inventing pixels and start, you know you can go a little bit, but if you go too far, you start seeing all that yucky goopy pixelation stuff. That's enough for resolution. Let's get into some super exciting Photoshop stuff again.