
8
THE BASICS
INTERPRETING DPI AND PPI
e terms DPI (dots per inch) and PPI (pixels per
inch, or pixel density) can oen be confusing to the
amateur photographer. In a nutshell, you use the
term DPI to describe the quality or resolution of
the image when it’s printed (or outputted), and you
use the term PPI to describe the quality of the nal
image le you’ve taken with your camera.
When talking about DPI and PPI, you must rst
consider the most simple of photography basics: how
big do you want the nal, printed image to be? Both
the PPI and the DPI can aect the nal quality of a
printed image.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s a small 4 × 6 image ...