6/6/2019 PPI vs. DPI: what's the difference?

PPI vs. DPI: what’s the

difference?
by Alex Bigman
6 years ago 8 min read

Design basics

Though the terms DPI (dots per inch) and PPI (pixels per inch) both describe the
resolution (or clarity) of an image, they’re not the same thing. PPI describes the
number of square pixels that show up in an inch of digital screen (usually between
67-300). DPI, on the other hand, is a printing term referring to the number of
physical dots of ink in a printed document.

Still not clear? There’s no shame in feeling lost on the DPI/PPI subject; the world
seems to have conspired to make it as confusing as humanly imaginable. Among
other reasons, this is largely a result of people (and some software manufacturers)
using the two terms interchangeably.

Not to worry—by the end of this article you will have a thorough understanding of
these terms and should feel comfortable enough to smugly correct any misuser of
the terms (And explain to them why they’re wrong! Because everyone loves that )
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the terms. (And explain to them why they re wrong! Because everyone loves that.)

Pixels Per Inch (PPI)

—
We’ll start here because, if you’re a designer, your primary concern is going to be
PPI. DPI, which we’ll discuss next, refers to a technical aspect of printing devices
that doesn’t directly concern you — it’s the print shop’s domain.

People say “DPI” when they really mean “PPI” all the time — so much so that it’s
become an established convention that you have to put up with (Apple, Microsoft
and Adobe have all been guilty of this improper usage). The important thing to know
is whether someone talking about DPI really means PPI. Read on and you will.

PPI’s digital basis

First off, what is a pixel? It seems rudimentary, but for many the confusion begins
here. Pixel stands for “picture element”. It’s the smallest physical element of a digital
display device that the eye can discern.

Zoom in close to the photo on your computer screen and you’ll see them: rows and
rows of tiny little squares. These are also the smallest addressable unit of a digital
image.

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Application: PistoCasero (via flickr)

In fact, pixels are actually made up of “sub-pixels” — red, green and blue light
elements that the human eye cannot see because additive color processing blends
them into a single hue which appears on the pixel level. But this fact is not directly
relevant to designers.

Confusion point: Regrettably, some manufacturers refer to these sub-pixels as

“dots” because they are (roughly) analogous to the CMYK dots of a printer,
which function in a similar way but by subtractive color processing (more on this
later). These manufacturers then boast of the “DPI” of their screens. If you see
this, ignore it! It is an annoying misuse of terms and probably an attempt to
overcharge you.

Video screen: BruceTurner (via flickr); iPad 4: citoki0815 (via flickr)

Note that pixels are physical things of a fixed size (albeit not a standard one;
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different devices have pixels of different shapes and sizes, the smallest known being
a microscopic 11¼ μm).

Hence, the number of pixels per inch (PPI) on your screen is a fixed quantity — not
something you can adjust by typing in a new number somewhere. Most LCD
monitors are in the neighborhood of 67 – 130ppi.

Diagram: Wikipedia

What does this mean?

If you’re only going to look at an image on a screen, its PPI doesn’t matter because
the PPI of your monitor is already fixed. So next time someone tells you to upload
images to a website at 72ppi because that is “web resolution,” you can tell them that
they have simply added a ridiculous extra step.

Unless they are concerned with visitors taking the images from the website and then
printing them, the PPI doesn’t matter. A 72ppi image and a 3,000ppi image will
appear exactly the same on screen.

What you need to understand: PPI and a printed target

So we’ve established this much: setting PPI only matters for printing — the transfer
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of a digital image onto a non-digital surface. “But wait…” you say, “we’re talking
pixels per inch, but printing paper doesn’t have pixels!” Yep, it’s confusing. Read on.

In the printing process, all the physical pixels that composed the image on screen
are translated into little squares of different hues on paper. Obviously these are not
pixels in the sense of the light-emitting mechanical device but “pixels” in the more
abstract sense of a square picture element (we’ll use quotes around this abstract
usage from now on to help keep things clear).

Print: Укларочить (via flickr)

What does this mean? “Pixels” on paper have no fixed size. If you increase the size
of your image by 300%, the “pixels” on the paper will become three times as large,
resulting in a bigger but more rough-looking image.

And how do you increase or decrease print-out size in this way? By adjusting the
number in the PPI (or, depending on your software, DPI) field.
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Suppose you have a 300 x 300 pixel image. If you set the PPI to 10, this is going to
make the print out relatively large: at 10 pixels per inch, it will be 30 x 30 inches (300
divided by 10 is 30). If you set the PPI to 300, this is going to make the print out
relatively small: at 300 pixels per inch, it will by 1 x 1 inches (300 divided by 300 is
1). Make sense?

Takeway: Think of the PPI input as a way to adjust the physical size – not the
resolution – of the eventual print-out. Decreasing the PPI, thus increasing the size of
the printout, may seem to produce a lower quality image because the pixels are
larger and more visible.

But remember, this is only a relative gauge of quality; if you were to stand further
away, the image would appear as clear as it did before. The absolute resolution of
the image has not changed; there are still as many “pixels” relative to the picture as
there were before. So the way to increase the resolution of an image is to produce
an image with more pixels, not increase the PPI.

Note: simply re-sampling an image at a higher number of pixels (inputting a new

number into the pixels field after the image is already made) is generally not a
great way to go about increasing quality, because the computer will likely cram
the image full of pixels in weird places.

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Billboard: Friction NYC (via flickr)

Looking at this billboard close up, the pixelation is obvious (so are dots, which we
will discuss in a minute). But at the distance from which most passersby will see it, it
will look crystal clear.

Dots Per Inch (DPI)

—
This section is going to be shorter because if you’re a designer, DPI barely concerns
you. Still, it’s an important concept to understand.

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Print: Nick Sherman (via flickr)

Printers do not reproduce an image by tiling pixel squares directly on top of one
another. Rather, they reproduce an image by spitting out tiny dots consisting of a
mix of four colors, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (black), which combine to create
a range of hues by the subtractive color model. There is bound to be some space
between these dots, and this is what DPI measures: their density.

Diagrams: Wikipedia

For example, if you are printing a 150ppi image at 600dpi, each “pixel” will consist of
16 dots (600 dots/150 “pixels” = 4 rows of 4 dots per “pixel”).

This matters to the client because, as a rule of thumb, the higher the DPI, the better
the image’s tonality and the smoother its color blending will be (it will also use more
ink and take longer to print, so keep that in mind for personal home printing). 150dpi
is generally considered the minimum standard for high quality photographic
reproduction in books and magazines. Newspapers often use 85dpi and the effect is
clear: individual dots are visible and some detail is lost. Billboards go as low as
45dpi, but you can’t tell because you’re typically viewing from very far away. Typical
dot matrix printers are capable for 60 – 90dpi, inkjet printers 300 – 600dpi, and laser
printers 600 – 1,800dpi.

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Note: higher dpi does not necessarily equate to higher quality because there is
no standard dot size or shape, meaning that one manufacturer’s dots might look
as good at 1200dpi as another manufacturer’s dots do at 700dpi. Anyway, that’s
not really your problem.

Takeaway: DPI is just a technical aspect of an individual printer, like the pixel
resolution of your computer monitor. As a designer, you have no control over this. All
you can do is recommend your client to a professional print shop and have the shop,
which will know the specifications of its machines, take over from there.

Do you have any questions or tips about PPI vs. DPI?

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