Resolution

My Kx is set to 12M Jpeg recorded pixels and *** Jpeg quality yet for some reason, when I transfer my photos to my Mac laptop, they come up at 72dpi which makes them useless for printing.

I don't believe this comes from the computer as photos copied onto here from my husband's little Nikon are always at 300dpi, as does an old Olympus digital. His photos are Jpeg too.

I'm tearing my hair out, yet I'm sure there must be a simple solution ! I've looked in the handbook but maybe I've missed something ?

First thing to do would be to check the file sizes on the card,that should tell you what resolution the images are, I presume you are using a card reader for transferr.

Dave.

It doesn't matter whether they're at 72dpi or 300dpi.

In Photoshop, you can change the dpi of the image by going to 'Image Resize', unchecking the 'Resample Image' tick box, and changing the dpi to 300. The number of pixels will not change. When you view the image at 100% on the screen, it will be exactly the same. You will however notice that the so-called 'Print Size' of the image becomes less - proportionately to the new dpi setting. You have changed nothing of any consequence when you print the image, though, because when you print, the image will be printed at whatever print size your paper is, NOT at the computer's meaningless 'Print Size' tagged to the image.

72 dpi just happens to be a common monitor resolution, but again, the dpi of the image doesn't have any effect on the image's resolution - the number of pixels in the image does - a 4000 x 2500 pixel image is a 4000 x 2500 pixel image whether the computer says it's 72dpi, 300dpi, or 1200dpi.

(The 'Print Size' of the image is occasionally relevant, for example if you are specifically told by someone else - e.g. a magazine editor - to provide them with an image at A3 at 300dpi. In this case you would place a tick in the 'Resample Image' check box when you resize the image, and add the dpi and print size dimensions that you want. The image will then be resampled - adding or subtracting extra pixels to make it exactly the size and dpi specified).

Hi Sally,

your images should be 4000 x 3000 pixels out of camera. The 72 ppi figure is the screen resolution (96 ppi on PC monitors). As stated the size is the size. The reference to 300dpi only gives you the size if printed at 300 dpi (typical for printing) ie a 4000 wide image will be roughly 13 inches wide at 300 dpi although pixels and dpi aren't quite the same thing it gives you a rough idea.

Bill, you said that so much more succinctly!

Never assume, it make an ASS of U and ME. Who says the correspondent has that big cheat commonly known as "Photoshop"?

I wish you would get off your little hobby horse for once! It doesn't make any difference whether the OP has Photoshop or not.

The point was to try and illustrate that 72ppi is irrelevant to the resolution of the image for printing. However if she does have Photoshop (or similar) perhaps the additional info would be of use.

72dpi was the old Mac standard (as mentioned by Bill) so I
expect it's something on the Mac laptop that's changing it

All my images are at 72dpi (or ppi whatever!) straight from camera (K7).

I just uploaded a picture to a competition, and as the rules stated '300dpi' - so I had to change it. I bet hardly anyone else has bothered though! Maybe I'll win by default

The K-5 is 300dpi, but the K10D and GX20 are both 72dpi???

I wonder why they did that the 72dpi goes back to the B&W
Apple days?

Don't get too confused, Blaze.
Open your picture.
Go to [Resize]
Now set your picture so that the longest dimension is 10"
Your resolution should now change to something like 300 dpi.
It will now print OK on to an A4 page.

If you want to crop - crop first, then resize. I resize my crops to 10x16 for competition (just fits well into A3), or 10X8 to give to family and friends (A4). This will give you some odd resolution values, probably.

Geoff

72dpi is standard Windoze screen res. Macs are 96, I think.

For general info:
72dpi was the old Apple colour resolution. As such, it was used by a whole generation of commercial artists (and some other odd folk like vision Psychologists). This resolution will look OK on a screen or when projected (as the screen or projector will usually be better in resolution terms).

The follow on from this is that most graphics programs tend to use 72 dpi as a starting point (even if this gives the image a notional size of something like 30" x 40". This seems to happen even if the program has been written for a PC only.

Geoff

These two pages should help

http://www.scantips.com/no72dpi.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dots_per_inch