All About DPI and Resolution

When you order with us for printed matter, you naturally want your design to be printed as beautifully as possible. The quality of your design is essential for beautiful print results. We will gladly explain how to submit the best possible print project! In this blog, you will read all about the sharpness of the image in your print file or resolution.

Sharp result

Do you want to have an image printed on a poster? Or would you like to include your photo on your business card? The image must have a certain quality to be printed nicely and sharply. A critical quality requirement is a resolution. Resolution indicates how sharp an image is displayed. The term dpi measures resolution. Dpi stands for Dots Per Inch, or pixels per inch. The higher the dpi, the higher the resolution and the sharper the result. Wondering which resolution you should use for a sharp print file? Here are some tips:

• Is the end product the size of an A3 (29.7 x 42 cm) or smaller? Then keep 300 dpi as a quality requirement. After all, you often see a document of this size up close.
• Is the end product as large as an A2 (42 x 59.4 cm) or larger? Then a dpi of 150 is sufficient. Printed material in such a large format can usually be seen from a distance.

You can always choose to supply a print file with a higher resolution. Please note: the higher the resolution, the heavier the file. Especially for a large print file such as a banner, a file that is too large can be too heavy to process.

Photo resolution

You may have a nice photo. You don’t just want to admire it digitally but also want to put it up on the wall in a large format. But up to what size can you have the photo printed sharp? We have the answer for you in the form of a calculation.

Suppose your photo has a size of 7776 x 5184 pixels. Divide both the height and width by 300 (dpi). Then multiply the height and width by 2.54 (these are the pixels per inch). The result of this sum is (more than) 60 x 40 cm. In this case, you can print your photo sharp at this size.