Pixel Per Inch (ppi) settings

[ejg62]

I have also posted this message on the Olympus board.

I have an Olympus 5060 camera. All pictures taken by this camera and downloaded on to the computer come out as 72 ppi. For good printed photos the ppi should be at least 300. When resizing to 300ppi the picture generally shrinks to about 8x6 (using HQ quality). Is there away to increase the ppi in the camera itself? Or is 72ppi the default and only option the camera is able to do?

Let me know if others have been able to determine a way to change the camera ppi when saving pictures.

Thanks

Jim

 

[ejg62]

A follow up to the original. Another problem trying to print a picture originally in 72 ppi is if I crop the picture then setup to 300ppi the size of the picture will be smaller than 8x6, sometimes significantly smaller.

Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

Jim

 

[rab]

Well, the camera doesn't have "pixels per inch", only "pixels" (sure you could measure the CCD, but that would give you a MUCH bigger ppi.

If you only have so many pixels, you can't make the "inches" (i.e., size of the displayed/printed image) too large or the "ppi" goes down too much. Got it?

-Rob

 

[Charlie99]

You don't say what image editing program you are using. Whatever it is, make sure that you DON'T RESAMPLE when changing the size.

There are a certain number of sampled point in the data coming from the camera. For a simple example consider a square 1000 x 1000 pixel photo. You could call that a 1,000 pixel per inch photo of 1" x 1", or call it a 5" square photo of 200 pixels per inch or ........

Once you start resampling and changing the number of pixels you will degrade the image quality.

Don't sweat the PPI of the image data from the camera. It's irrelevant.

 

[Gilligan]

72 dpi is the cameras default setting for JPEG's.

Print quallity can be less than 300 dpi.

If you have a software program such as Photoshop Elements, or the like, open the photo in the program and re-size it there. For example, you can set the crop tool to 4"X6", 5"X7" or 8"X10" and 300 dpi then crop the photo. Make the necessary adjustments to brightness, contrast, sharpness, etc. then save the photo as a TIFF. TIFF's are not compressed (unless you make them). JPEG's are always compressed to one degree or another. The TIFF will be a large file.

The megapixel rating of your camera will dictate how large of a picture you can make at 300 dpi. You can experiment first in Photoshop by re-sizing a photo out of the camera by changing it's size (not with the cropping tool) and watching the pixels window as you type in different inch sizes in the box under the "Image" "Resize". That will give you an idea of how large a photo you can make before the pixel size drops too low. Even 270 pixels will make a good print.

Keep in mind that your camera is not taking pictures that are compatible with standard print sizes unless you have it set to that ahead of time (if your camera has that feature). For example, if you set the crop tool to 4"X6" there will be some cropping to the height of the photo because the camera size photo is not proportionately compatible with the print size.