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Figuring out What Print Resolutions to Use!Let’s face it. You will need to know about print resolutions when you begin to do digital art. There’s no way around it. Most beginners have a tendency to simply paint what they can fit on their computer screens.I can tell you one thing: that is the wrong way to go about painting digitally! By not learning the proper print resolutions, you will come across many problems when it comes down to printing it out onto physical form. Plus, you will be wasting time drawing on a smaller canvas whereas you could have invested that time drawing on a larger canvas and then shrinking the image later. This is more effective because details get lost when blowing up a smaller picture than having a large picture in the first place and then shrinking it. 1. Learning the aspect ratioMost printers have a set size or shape that can be print out. The shape of the paper will be your aspect ratio. Basically, it’s a measurement that divides the length and the width to form a rectangular or square ratio. For example, if a piece of paper is 10 x 10 inches, it would have an aspect ratio of 1.00. If a piece of paper is 8 x 10 inches, it will have a ratio of 1.25 and so for and so forth. There are a few common aspect ratios that most companies use:
Of course, different companies give different sizes depending on its format. Just use this as a general rule of thumb when you want to start painting. 2. Learning the PPILet’s say you saw a poster sized painting that you would like to paint but have no idea how large the painting needs to be before it can be correctly displayed in print form. How would you go about finding out? It’s quite simple, actually. Most printers print at a fairly decent PPI (pixels per inch). It is different from DPI (dots per inch), which means how many dots and be printed out physically on a piece of paper from a printer. An average printer can imitate the 72 PPI quality on your monitor by printing 300 DPI on paper. However, that’s just not good enough for what you need if quality is an issue. A good print with excellent quality will be printed with 150 PPI. Even better, 300 PPI will give you pixels per inch that can’t be seen with the naked eye. Good commercial printers will print around 600 to 1200 DPI to match those qualities respectively. But one problem arises: since most printers are different, how can you ensure your print will come out with the best quality? 3. Pixel measurements as standardThere are so many print resolutions and resolution properties that it’s not always easy to figure out the best quality control when it actually goes to the printers.Well, there is a method to guaranteed precise measurements: using screen resolution pixel measurements as it’s more fixed. That means using PPI instead of DPI. But first, I will need you to pick the best PPI. Normally, I use 150 PPI. The reason is that it’s good enough as I can’t see the pixels when it’s printed out, and not too high that my computer is not able to handle the resolution. Hence, it’s a balance between getting the best resolution with what your computer is capable of handling. Anyway, once you have figured out the PPI that you want, choose the recommended screen resolution size: 96 pixels per square inch on a PC or 72 pixels per square inch on a Apple monitor. 4. Choosing the correct canvas sizeThe last step is to do a bit of math with the aspect ratios, the PPI, and the screen resolution of your monitor. I’ll use the settings I would use normally. For example, I would like to have a 16 x 24 physical poster type size canvas. That means I will take the 16 x 24 and multiply it with 150 PPI. This will give me a screen resolution of 2400 x 3600 screen pixels. To understand this, start up your digital art program and open up a new canvas. Right away, it’ll ask you a few choices to set the settings on. As a general rule of thumb, the number one setting to always look for is the PPI. Set it to 96 or 72 depending on your computer type. Then, when choosing the size, set the measurements to pixels and then type the number of pixels for the width and the height: namely 2400 x 3600 pixels in this example. For more information on minimum sizes, visit Deviant Art’s FAQ on print resolutions here. In conclusion, when you have figured out your canvas size, you can start to use your motivation and begin to paint! Return from Print Resolutions to Concerns.
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