If you want the best, Resolution’s what you need!

One thing many people don’t realise when they come to have their pictures printed, whether that be on paper on printed on canvas, is that the resolution is important to the outcome of the print. Many digital cameras these days allow you to choose the quality of the image that you’re saving, offering smaller file sizes and lower resolutions in order to save space and fit more pictures on the SD card. The downside to this is that the quality, or resolution, of the smaller files is too poor to print.

This means that when they are printed they come out fuzzy, grainy and blurry.

Cameras take pictures this low quality because they’re fine for use on the Internet, such as on Facebook or MySpace. The Internet displays images at the resolution 72 dpi (dots per inch) which is fine when the pictures appear on your computer screen. However 72 dpi is far too low a resolution to be printed. Instead, when printing an image you’ll require a resolution of a minimum of 300 dpi.

If you were buying images from a photographer’s website you would generally pay more for the higher resolution versions. Fore example the 72 dpi version may be the cheapest because it’s only useful for website work, where a 300 dpi or higher resolution image would cost more as it can be printed.

With this in mind ensure that if you’re looking to take a photo with a view to printing it on canvas, or on paper, that you choose the highest quality setting on your digital camera and use the highest resolution available. The higher the resolution, the better quality the photograph.