DPI woes, how do I sort this please?

I would like to print some of my photo's and display them, but when I went into my local printing shop I was told that my camera wasn't on it's higest setting and that the DPI was on 72, and not 240 or 300. This has upset me because I can't print my photo's at the size I want and they have to be smaller.

How do I sort this please?

After taking photo's, I upload them to a website called Picture monkey, and then sharpen them on Picassa. This might be what is messing my photo's up. If so then how to I clean my photo's up with out the DPI being affected? This is really frustrating!

I took my camera too my local camera shop where they checked it and said it was set at it's higest setting, I have a Pentax K30, by the way.

I have just uploaded a file to picture monkey to test it and after processing the picture are you saving it at the largest resolution?

For some reason they give the file sizes names, the largest being Sean

I might be wrong but I think you need to find another printing shop.

This is how I see it (but as said, I might be wrong). You take your maximum size (pixel wise) photo to the shop and they print it to the size that you want; their computer or printing machine should calculate the required dpi.

Question. What do you upload (full size highest quality jpegs)? That's something like 10MByte per photo.Or do you resize first? If you resize, that might be the problem and noty the actual DPI.

I doubt it's your camera, more likely the transition between uploading and editing. To maximise your picture size for large prints you should really take shots in RAW format and then edit in that format.

When you have edited, either in a program such as Photoshop or Pentax's own image editor, you save as a JPG file at maximum setting. This reduces the amount of image information loss.

This is my process but there are doubtless far more qualified members of the forum who will advise you even more.

Edit...I'm not familiar with Picture Monkey but Flickr is free and allows you to upload your original image size rather than choosing a smaller version.

The DPI scarcely makes any practical difference. Either the printers are being a bit dense, or the online software used to edit the photos has resized the images down to something which looks OK on the web, but is way too small to print.

You want to give your printers the original size images, which should be 4928 pixels on the longest side assuming you haven't cropped them. Find out which bit of software is resizing your images and change the settings, or find better software.

Photoshop CS2 is available free online.

I don’t touch it, but I know its bigger then 72DPI!

It’s in Catherine Street in Salisbury, anyone heard of it? Called Fugi shop.

I used to in Picnic when it was working, but I leave well alone now.

You want to give your printers the original size images, which should be 4928 pixels on the longest side assuming you haven't cropped them.

Does that mean I should stop using picture monkey, and try Google Picasa only? :

I don't know, never tried picture monkey. What size are you're images when you download them? To check, right click and 'properties' in Windows explorer.

Just did some Googling, and found some editing software does interfear with the size.

I also found a programme called Photo! Editor http://pho.to/editor/features.php

Has anyone used this please?

I would recommend photoshop cs2. Free to download and fully featured. Easy to set the dpi to whatever you want. Or leave well alone. Not that the dpi actually affects much.

I use Faststone Image Viewer. Free to download from here link .

FastStone Image Viewer is very user-friendly image browser, converter and editor. I have never really got on with Photoshop, maybe I'll go on a course sometime but in the mean time I use Faststone.

Do you still have the files that you uploaded to picture monkey on your computer or a disk? If so you will still be able to get them printed

We need to be sure of our terms first.

ppi is Pixels per inch and refers to the sizing of the file in the camera and in software such as Photoshop. Some Pentax cameras are set at 72ppi, some at 300ppi, but the image size is also related to this. A 72ppi image would be huge in cm dimensions, a 300ppi one would be smaller. This assumes the number of pixels is the same.

The K-5 makes an image 300ppi, ideal for printing, that's around A3 in size.

dpi is dots per inch and refers to how many dots a printer can pay down in an inch. Obviously the more the better. Our Epson 1290 delivers 28800dpi for example.

Back to ppi, try changing the figures in the Image Size dialog box and see how it affects the various dimensions.

Also, a lot of program will, by default, always indicate 72DPI. It used to be standard screen resolution, not picture size.

Nowadays, it's different, but old habits are hard to kill.

Have you tried the software that came with the camera?

My experience with PP software is limited to some Linux applications and now PDCU. I find PDCU quite easy to use for my needs (a bit of exposure correction, sharpness, sometimes getting the horizon level or a little cropping).

Hi all,

I was intrigued by all this as although Pentax Exif says 300dpi my most recent Serif PhotoPlus X6 uses 96dpi and will change your Exif to that if resaved without exporting as '300dpi'.

I only set to a particular dpi when wanting precise size placement inside desk top publishing as the quality is better doing it this way rather than stretching in the program.I also find printers flight checking (checking for problems prepress) pdf's expect a consistent dpi to show.

Hunting around I found this article which seems to say that the EXIF marker for dpi used by camera manufacturers is a nonsense and most importantly for this thread irrelevant. An image is simply the pixel resolution it is regardless. It makes sense to me.

http://www.dpiphoto.eu/dpi.htm