[fov]

Well, they specified 300 dpi at printing size. That's essentially the same thing (although it puts the burden on the contributor to guess what printing size would be).

[nikoniko]

How much space should the screenshot take on the page? For instance, a 1024x768 image at 300PPI prints out at 3.413"x2.56".

If you're using Photoshop, you can go to the Image Size menu, enter 300 for the PPI, then (and this is important) go back up to pixel width & height and change them back to the original resolution. PPI will stay the same even though you've changed the height and width. Finally, save the file in a format that retains PPI information, such as TIFF or PSD, and then you've done your part and they've got their 300PPI image. Nothing about the picture is changed other than that one value - it doesn't get resized or anything like that - but it should be enough to get the picture past their acceptance policy if they're particular about it. They're bound to resize it anyway to suit their needs, so if you do that little bit to make them happy, they'll take care of the rest.

[Crunchy in milk]

Originally Posted by Jeysie

Output to screen is 72 dpi period (well, unless you're on a Mac, in which case it's 96 dpi), so there's no magic way to "add" info to suddenly get a 300 dpi starter image.

Its the other way around Jeysie, the mac screen output is 72 and the average PC's is 96. This is why when you look at a mac and pc side by side, using the same screen resolution things by default (ie fonts of the same size) appear smaller on the PC screen.

According to the professionals (who, what?) a good trick is to painstakingly vectorize your screenshot and resize that to print resolution.

Have a gander ->

[fov]

Crunchy, thanks for that link. VERY helpful.

[Jeysie]

Crunchy:

Dammit, it is. I have obviously gotten two of my brain cells completely crossed up.

And, yeah, the people I used to work for always preferred vector graphics because it's much easier to scale things up and down to whatever size you need, as well as easier to output to things like vinyl cutting machines. I can think of many occasions where one of our employees had to convert things. I just didn't think you could really vectorize a screenshot (we tended to work with line art mostly). Cool!

Peace & Luv, Liz

[fov]

What determines whether your monitor displays at 72 or 96? The OS? The monitor? A combination of the two?

Both my Mac and my PC default to 72, I think. (At least, when I take a screenshot on either, the resolution of the screenshot is 72 dpi.)

[Crunchy in milk]

Originally Posted by fov

What determines whether your monitor displays at 72 or 96? The OS? The monitor? A combination of the two?

Both my Mac and my PC default to 72, I think. (At least, when I take a screenshot on either, the resolution of the screenshot is 72 dpi.)

Its not so much of an issue these days. It started out as a hardware difference primarily but modern monitors are basically identical between platforms. Unfortunately the color space/gamma still differs between them and is a combination of hardware (well, the ROM on a mac's graphics card anyway) and software factors (it ties into the opinion of Macs being primarily for design/print work so the colour space on the monitor is an attempt to match printed page output.

This first one is actually a red-herring. There is no difference between the screen resolution of a Mac and PC monitor no matter what anyone tells you and I will explain why. Admittedly, the matter is confused by the fact that, on a Mac, an inch is an inch - well, pretty close anyway. On a PC screen, an inch is one and a third inches. The inches I am referring to are those measurements on the rulers along the tops of program windows. (And apologies to all my European brethren who, like myself, use centimeters.)

When the Mac was introduced in 1984, the little 9 inch black and white screen was the first popular computer to offer true WYSIWYG. 12 point type was 12 points high both on the screen and when printed out. There being 72 points in an inch meant that there were 72 screen pixels to an inch, so each pixel is exactly one point square. This is often mistakenly called 72 DPI (dots per inch), it is in fact 72 PPI (pixels per inch). DPI refers to laser or ink-jet printer dots which are soft and round.

Thanks to the high resolution of Mac screens, that 72 PPI was possible. PC screens were derived from NTSC video monitors, in fact many of the earlier ones were interlaced just like television sets. To compensate for the lack of resolution, screen type was made larger to be easier on the eyes. The relationship between what was seen on the screen and what printed out was 96:72 or one and a third. So a "logical inch" on a PC screen is 96 pixels wide - the pixels are not smaller, the inches are bigger.

This also means that any font size on the PC screen will be one and a third times bigger than the eventual printout and one and a third times bigger than the equivalent font on a Mac screen. Nine point type on a PC is about the same size as twelve point type on a Mac. Luckily, web browsers use relative rather than absolute font sizes and the "normal" size on Mac and PCs are roughly the same.

[fov]

This also means that any font size on the PC screen will be one and a third times bigger than the eventual printout and one and a third times bigger than the equivalent font on a Mac screen. Nine point type on a PC is about the same size as twelve point type on a Mac.

!!!!

When I write in Word on the PC (in Times New Roman, 12 point), I usually have the view set to 90% and it's just the size I like it to be. Then I open the same document on the Mac and I have to bump it back up to 100% because the 90% looks tiny. Always wondered why that was.

(Okay, maybe that's not worthy of four exclamation points, but it's still nice to understand the reason. )

[Jake]

Okay hm. I obviously have no idea what the magazine would actually prefer, but here's my advice as someone who has spent the last three years working on advertisement and article layout based on materials submitted by clients and contributors.

* My advice is that you don't at all resize the screenshot. If the magazine is expecting computer screenshots, they're going to be expecting exactly what a computer screenshot looks like - a 96 or 72 dpi image that is something like 1024x768 pixels. I wouldn't sweat it.

On top of that, in my experience, nothing is more annoying than getting an image from a client that has been messed with. In our graphics department if we get images that have been manipulated by the client ahead of time, we try as often as we can to get the original image, because the stuff the client did to the image is, 99% of the time, irreversable. For instance if you take a screenshot and blow it up to 300 DPI in Photoshop, what if the graphics guys didn't want that? They can't reduce it back to its original resolution without a huge quality hit to the image (note how the blown up version of your avatar has all of that smoothing and blurring around the edges of the pixels? That would get massively compounded if they tried to reduce the image back to its original size; it wouldn't be smart enough to just scale back down to its original pixels, photoshop would try to reinterpret and interpolate when you sized it back down).

Plus, if the only change you're making in your end is a one-step photoshop operation to size the image to 300dpi, that's something the graphics guys can do themselves if they need it. You might just want to enclose a note in the email saying since its a computer screen capture you're including you obviously couldn't get a bigger one, but other than that I wouldn't worry about it. If they run into a problem, they'll let you know.

* If you run your computer screen at a higher resolution, you are effectively running at a higher dots per inch ratio (which is obvious if you think about it... pull out a ruler and count the pixels in one inch of your screen, then up the resolution a few notches and count again... clearly there are more dots per inch ).

So, if you're taking a screenshot of a game, for instance, or a flash movie (something that will scale up along with your screen res), just take the screenshots in the highest possible resolution your computer supports, and you'll be giving them more dots to work with. Don't worry about the DPI settings in Photoshop or anything - again, the graphics people at the magazine will know what to do with the images.

... That's all really. Basically, if you're trying to fix a technical problem with your image to match the specifications of the magazine yourself, chances are (no offense here) that the magazine's graphics people can do it better. Everyone would probably be happier if you just explained your problem but trusted them to do their jobs for you and fix it



Getting a grasp on the notion of dots per inch in print in relation to screen pixels is tough for a few minutes, but mainly all you have to think about in terms of DPI and screenshots is: it doesn't matter. Computers are pixel-based things. People know that computer screens are made up of dots; you see things like huge pixel based mouse arrows and extreme closeups of menus from office apps in advertising and magazine layout all the time. Nobody, including a layout person, would assume it was a print error or low quality image if they saw a 72 DPI screenshot of a computer in a magazine.

In terms of DPI in general, you have to remember that despite the fact that MacOS thinks to itself "i'm running at 72 dpi" and windows thinks "i'm running at 96" that totally doesn't matter, because the "DPI" you're running at changes with the size of your monitor and the resolution you're running it at. There's no correlation at all.

The only important thing to think about regarding DPI is the quality of the final print the magazine will be producing. Their printer clearly outputs to 300 DPI and they don't want artwork smaller than that (actually, realistically, they probably only output at 200 DPI but they want 300 DPI resolution art so they can print it 33% bigger without taking a quality hit). When they ask for 300 DPI art, they just want to make sure if people are submitting a photograph they will send a proper huge piece of artwork instead of a 320x200 pixel version they received from their mom via email or downloaded off Google images.

[fov]

I've emailed to ask how they want me to handle the screenshot. This magazine probably doesn't print screenshots very often (in fact, I'd be a little surprised if they ever have), so it may not be an issue they've ever had to deal with. You're right, though, that it would probably be easiest to submit the screenshot exactly as it started out and let them deal with touching it up if they choose to. It's not like I'm downgrading the quality at all. (It's not 1024x768 pixels, though. It's just the Image Size box in Photoshop, so it's much smaller than full screen.)

This whole process is kind of bizarre to me, because I work in publishing. I'm used to being able to just walk across the office and ask the designer what s/he wants.

In terms of DPI in general, you have to remember that despite the fact that MacOS thinks to itself "i'm running at 72 dpi" and windows thinks "i'm running at 96" that totally doesn't matter, because the "DPI" you're running at changes with the size of your monitor and the resolution you're running it at. There's no correlation at all.

Gotcha. I was just confused because when you take a screenshot (on either platform), it defaults to 72 dpi.