[fov]

Can anyone tell me if there's a way to take a screen capture at a dpi higher than 72? I want to take a screenshot, but want it to be 300 dpi instead of 72. This is for an article I'm submitting to a print magazine and I'm concerned that if I just bump the resolution up to 300 in Photoshop, it'll make the screenshot blurry because Photoshop will be adding information to the image.

I'm not even sure this CAN be done, but I figured if it could, someone here would know.

[jjacob]

I don't think that's possible, after all, a pixel is a pixel (to me atleast) There might be a little application for this though, that applies some sort of anti-aliasing voodoo to the cap, or something or other.

Come to think of it, I don't even know why I replied

[fov]

Originally Posted by jjacob

Come to think of it, I don't even know why I replied

I'm glad you did. It makes the thread seem a lot less lame than if no one had replied.

[Jeysie]

Mmm. I'm not "trained" in art or anything, so I may be dead wrong, but...

AFAIK, the answer is: no dice. 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.

You can resize a screen capture and *then* play with the dpi from there, but there's no way to change what you start out with.

Edit: Er, whoops, Jacob beat me to it.

Peace & Luv, Liz

[lumi]

Originally Posted by fov

This is for an article I'm submitting to a print magazine and I'm concerned that if I just bump the resolution up to 300 in Photoshop, it'll make the screenshot blurry because Photoshop will be adding information to the image.

I think that's a good way. I tried it myself, and everything looked alright. Here's a taste:



Just avoid saving it as a JPEG, because that'll leave artifacts.

[fov]

Interesting... I took the screen captures on a Mac, but they defaulted to 72, not 96.

The article itself is ABOUT dpi (ironically), so it would be kind of embarassing to send a crappy screen capture.

Just avoid saving it as a JPEG, because that'll leave artifacts.

Ack, good point. I hadn't thought of that. What's the best format for print... tiff?

[jjacob]

Originally Posted by fov

I'm glad you did. It makes the thread seem a lot less lame than if no one had replied.

Someone would've replied shortly anyway, to help a damsel in distress (forumites are like that somehow, hmmm)

I unleashed my 1337 g00gle skills on the problem and found this, although I'm not sure the trial version is fully functional (though *cough* astalavista *cough* might help you with that ). Good luck!

[jjacob]

Originally Posted by fov

Interesting... I took the screen captures on a Mac, but they defaulted to 72, not 96.

The article itself is ABOUT dpi (ironically), so it would be kind of embarassing to send a crappy screen capture.



Ack, good point. I hadn't thought of that. What's the best format for print... tiff?

Depends, tiff files are usually quite large (several megabytes), so that's a bit clumsy for web publication, what's it for?

[lumi]

Originally Posted by fov

Ack, good point. I hadn't thought of that. What's the best format for print... tiff?

TIFF should work. If you're bringing it to an outside party for printing, you might want to ask them what they like to use.

[fov]

It's for a print magazine, not the web. The printing's completely out of my control. I'm just supposed to provide them with graphics that are at least 300 dpi.

I'm going to ask the editor if they have a preferred file format, but if not I'll probably go with TIFF.

[Jeysie]

The best format to save in is whatever the printer tells you is the best format to save in. (I used to work as a secretary for a graphic design shop, and the vast array of filetypes involved was weird, to put it mildly.) But yeah, a lossless format like TIFF or PNG would prolly be good.

How big do you need the screenshot to print out? You may just be able to get away with trying to capture a screen using the largest screen res you can manage from one of your computers, and just let them print it, if they're using 300 dpi and you don't mind a kind of dinky result.

Edit: Feh, never mind, I'm too slow again!

Peace & Luv, Liz

[jjacob]

Originally Posted by fov

It's for a print magazine, not the web. The printing's completely out of my control. I'm just supposed to provide them with graphics that are at least 300 dpi.

I'm going to ask the editor if they have a preferred file format, but if not I'll probably go with TIFF.

You should go with TIFF then, uncompressed files is all they use in publishing, so there I think they probably meant that the printing itself would be 300 DPI, and someone explained it in a wrong way, or something?

[fov]

Originally Posted by Jeysie

How big do you need the screenshot to print out? You may just be able to get away with trying to capture a screen using the largest screen res you can manage from one of your computers, and just let them print it, if they're using 300 dpi and you don't mind a kind of dinky result.

That's what I wanted to do. Unfortunately, it's not a whole screen, but a (small) window in Photoshop. If I just do a screen capture of the window and increase the dpi to 300, the printed size decreases to like 1".

Originally Posted by jjacob

I think they probably meant that the printing itself would be 300 DPI, and someone explained it in a wrong way, or something?

The guidelines said that any digital images provided should be at least 300 dpi. This magazine probably doesn't print screenshots very often (if ever), so they were probably assuming the graphics would be digital photos. I may just send the 72 dpi version AND the 300 dpi version, and tell them to use whichever they prefer.

(It's the first time I've worked with this publication, so I'm a little nervous about everything being just right.)

[Intrepid Homoludens]

fov, why not simply contact the magazine and ask them how to do it? If they don't know they may be able to refer you to someone who does.

[Jeysie]

Fov: Ahh. In that case, you are going to have to blow up the shot then, until you end up with something the right original size so that when they print it out at 300 dpi or whatever it'll end up the right output size. Simply changing the original small image from 72 dpi to 300 dpi without changing the size won't accomplish much.

Personally, I'd just give 'em the plain unadulterated screenshot and say, "Sorry guys, you know this art stuff, I don't." I know full well what sort of fee rate graphic artists pull in... they can handle it. ;P Alternatively you could take the shot to a local graphic artist yourself and have them tweak it for you/give you advice, if you're worried about getting things just right.

Peace & Luv, Liz

[fov]

Originally Posted by Intrepid Homoludens

fov, why not simply contact the magazine and ask them how to do it? If they don't know they may be able to refer you to someone who does.

But... but... that would be too easy!

The reason I'm stressing about it is that the article is about dpi. So, in theory, I should know something about it myself. Problem is, the article explains to minaturists (who are working with files that print out at 1" across or smaller!) how to get a good-looking graphic on a home printer. Making the graphic look good at normal size on a professional printer is a whole different issue.

Anyway, thanks for the feedback. It's at least helped me know how to approach the problem.

[Aj_]

TIFF files are flexible, they can take all the characteristics of a JPEG, or all the characteristics of a BITMAP. So you want to choose non-lossy compression, and colour format you want.

The way they use dpi seems wrong to me, I can't tell what they're on about. I'm pretty sure they're miss using terms, or being unnessarily confusing.

[fov]

Originally Posted by Aj_

The way they use dpi seems wrong to me, I can't tell what they're on about. I'm pretty sure they're miss using terms, or being unnessarily confusing.

How so?

I think they're just trying to ensure that any digital photos they receive (as opposed to prints or slides) have a higher resolution than digital cameras usually default to.

[Aj_]

Originally Posted by fov

How so?

I think they're just trying to ensure that any digital photos they receive (as opposed to prints or slides) have a higher resolution than digital cameras usually default to.

Exactly, it has nothing to do with what they want.

dpi probably more accurately ppi(since dpi is already used for something else), is used to determine the size on the paper, not the resolution/quality.

[Jeysie]

Heh, he has a point, what they probably should be saying is something along the lines of, "We need a source image that's x pixels high and x pixels wide to get the size print you need."

Peace & Luv, Liz