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Image size is 240 PPI instead of 300 PPI

burgermael
Apprentice

when i go image size in photoshop, my images are always 240 pixels per inch but are 300 pixels per inch on my 7D Mark II. anyone know how to change this 

18 REPLIES 18

Peter
Authority
Authority

Does it matter for you? Why would you want to change it?

Peter
Authority
Authority



"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"
/ From 99designs.

 

With that said, change it in Camera Raw or Lightroom. If you want to change ppi in PS, Image>Image size.

A 3000 ppi image is about 1700 times larger than a 72 ppi image. It would not make sense to upload an image that large to be viewed on a screen and most sites would probably reject an image that size as well e-mail servers. Also if you send a low resolution image to a monitor it is going to look like a low resolution image and in fact a high resolution monitor will just show how bad the image is better than a low resolution monitor. I read the articlle that this came from and it is not accurate information and is not logically thought out. 

ebiggs1
Legend
Legend

This setting is not changeable in the camera.   You can change the image size in PS easily.

 

EB
EOS 1DX and 1D Mk IV and less lenses then before!

ebiggs1
Legend
Legend

I just thought you may not know how to do this upon import.

Are you opening them through Camera Raw?  If so, there's a link at the bottom-center, just under the image preview, that you can use to set the opened image size, ppi, color space, and so forth.

You can change an image resolution, all you need to do is use Photoshop menu, Image, than Size, in the image size dialog un-check Resample set the DPI resolution you want and click OK.  Not a single pixel will be changed all that will happen is the DPI setting will change to the one you choose and  Photoshop will calculate and show the width and height for the new resolution.

 

You can make an action to do for you.

EB
EOS 1DX and 1D Mk IV and less lenses then before!

TCampbell
Elite
Elite

PPI = "Pixels Per Inch".  There are no pixels-per-inch in the camera... this is something that is only used when producing a physical print.

 

The camera sensor simply has some resolution.  The 7D II is a 20.2 megapixel camera with a resolution of 5472 × 3648.

 

But lets use some easier numbers so you can visual this... suppose the camera resolution is 6000 pixels wide by 4000 pixels high.  (BTW, they aren't really "pixels".  Pixels have three color channels... red, green, & blue.  The sensor only has a single color channel and uses a color filter array to produce color.  Three channel color is derived mathemetically when the image is "de-mosaiced" by the RAW decoder.  I digress.) 

 

Anyway... the resolution simply is what it is.  But let's suppose you want to print this.  And you decide to set a PPI of 500.  Since the "I" in PPI and DPI is "inches" then 6000 ÷ 500 = 12 (inches) and 4000 ÷ 500 = 8 (inches).  So the output would produce an image which is 12" x 8".  

 

Suppose you change the DPI or PPI to 300.  Now it's 6000 ÷ 300 = 20 inches.  4000 ÷ 300 = 13.3 inches.  So you'd get an output which is 20" by 13 1/3rd inches.

 

You can set the DPI in Photoshop at will... but changing it doesn't actually DO anything to the image.  It would be like going into the meta-data and changing the date & time when the photo was shot... it wont actually change what you see on the screen because it's just meta-data.  Normally when you print in Photoshop, you can define the output size there (you don't actually have to do all the math of figuring out what DPI to use.)

 

But for some reason... I still encounter people who seem to think it's really important to have that value set to some special number ... as if they just can't deal with the file if the value isn't set to that number.

 

Think of the DPI / PPI as a "coment field".  Nothing meaningful happens when you change it.

 

Tim Campbell
5D III, 5D IV, 60Da

"But for some reason...  ... as if they just can't deal with the file if the value isn't set to that number."

 

Kinda like 'crop factor' isn't it? Smiley Wink  Seems to hold on for some unknown reason that just confuses folks.

EB
EOS 1DX and 1D Mk IV and less lenses then before!

No, crop-factor is a real thing.   The appearance of an image and it's qualites change in a noticeable way when you use a different crop factor. 

 

Specifically the angle of view changes (probably the most noticeable thing).  But since photographers "compose" their shots, it causes the photographer to either change their subject distance or change their lens selection (really the focal length selection) when they use a different crop factor and that ends up changing other things such as the depth of field.  When people take milky-way photos, the amount of time you can expose (without the imaging blurring due to Earth's movement) actually does change based on crop factor.

 

There are lots of reasons to be aware of your crop factor.

 

We've hashed this out before ... and since it's not really the topic of the OP's inquiry, it would be best to leave this discussion for another thread.

 

Tim Campbell
5D III, 5D IV, 60Da

"No, crop-factor is a real thing."

 

So is dpi and ppi but it doesn't stop people from being confused be either or both.  Tim you may not like other people's opinion but it doesn't make them wrong. Truth of the matter you don't have to compare your lens to a 35mm equivalents and you don't need to figure ppi or dpi when you import your photos into PS.

 

Keep the Earth rotating, my friend.  Smiley Wink

EB
EOS 1DX and 1D Mk IV and less lenses then before!
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