{"id":1469,"date":"2021-09-27T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2021-09-27T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/?p=1469"},"modified":"2021-08-23T02:42:05","modified_gmt":"2021-08-23T02:42:05","slug":"pixels-print-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.copyexpress.co.nz\/blog\/pixels-print-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Pixels, Print, & You"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
An introduction to what is a Pixel, how it effects your printing, and what you can do to get the best out of them<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

If you have bought a tv, camera, computer, tablet or smartphone, you would have seen terms thrown about like HD, 4k, or Megapixel used to describe how big an image you can see or how detailed it is. For a lot of people this means absolutely nothing to them, and ends up being confused or being sold something far more expensive than what they need because they \u2018need\u2019 those extra pixels. Not knowing what a pixel is can even affect us printers as people don\u2019t understand the nature of them and end up supplying graphics that are too low or too high in pixels for what they need for printing. In this article we will explain what a pixel is, how it applies to the real world, and some simple tricks to translate between all the different standards effected by them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What is a pixel<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A pixel comes from the world of computers and is used to describe a single dot of colour in an image. All images on the screen are made up of a grid of these dots. A graphic is made up of so many pixels across and so many pixels down. The more you have, the more detailed the image. The more pixels an image has, the more memory \/ storage is needed. (The amount of storage and memory needed is also changed by how colourful or complex an image is and what type of format is used to store it, but that\u2019s outside the scope of this article.) Here\u2019s an example of our company logo at 64 x 64 pixels and at 512 x 512 pixels. As you can see the more pixels you have, the more detailed and smoother the image is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem is that pixels themselves don\u2019t have a size, it\u2019s just a measure of how many of them make up the image. Why do that? The full answer is a bit too long to cover here, but in simple terms it was not the physical size of the screen that wasn’t the limiting factor for images, it was the computer attached to it. In the early days they were focused on how many bytes of computer memory it would take to fill a screen with images and how long it would take to do it limited what they could do. As computers improved, they could put more pixels on the screen and the bigger the displays got, but even the oldest image could still fill the screen as it could be scaled up to fit. The example of our logo in two different resolutions (pixel sizes) shows how it is done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DPI, SD\/HD\/2K\/4K\/6K\/8K, and Megapixel are different but related<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

If you brought a TV, smart phone, or laptop, the odds are you\u2019ve had all these terms thrown at you but without much explanation of what they really mean. So here\u2019s the short version of what each term means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Megapixel – Millions of pixels in an image<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Times the number of pixels across an image by how many pixels down, and you will get a figure of the total amount of detail in an image. The larger the number the better the detail. These days it\u2019s measured in millions of pixels or MegaPixels. You\u2019ll most likely encounter the term when describing the quality of a camera image. The more pixels you have the more you can zoom into an image or crop parts off and still have a great looking picture. While there are other limiting factors (size and quality of the lens, the way the image is compressed, etc) the general progress is ever larger megapixels numbers for better images.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

SD\/HD\/2K\/4K\/6K\/8K – the number of pixels used in a screen<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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SD is the old TV standard (720 \u00d7 576 pixel \/ 0.4MP) which was fine when the screen was only a 14 or 18 inch, but on a 40\u201d it would become very grainy unless you are sitting a good distance away.  HD (1920 x 1080 pixels\/1K\/2MP) allows for larger screens while keeping smooth fast moving images. As screens keep getting bigger the number of pixels needed to make the images look good has to increase, leading to first doubling the width and height for 4K then a factor of four for 8K. With computers you will also find them being made with 2K or 6K pixels as this allows for more cost effective high resolution while keeping the same size or to have ultra wide screens for more working space. (Ultrawides have ratios of 21 x 9 or greater compared to the normal 16×9 of a standard tv or monitor.)  Beyond that there is already a 16K size but again that\u2019s outside our scope here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

DPI \/ DPC –  a measure of density of pixels<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

As noted before, pixels are a measurement of quantity, not physical size. DPI (Dots Per Inch) is a measure of how many dots, or in this case pixels, for every inch (25mm) of the image. DPC (Dots Per Centimetre) is the same measurement but using a smaller length to measure the number of pixels in. Why is this important? It\u2019s because above a certain density of dots per inch or centimetre the human eye can not see them, making it look smooth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When it comes to images the two most important considerations are not just the number of pixels, but how many of them are in a given space. The higher the MegaPixel or Dots Per Inch values the better looking the image.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How does this affect your images?<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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When you\u2019re creating material for use in promoting your business, the megapixel and DPI directly effects the quality of the images. On a screen the traditional standard is that you have 72 or 96 pixels per inch on a screen. People are more accepting of having a pixelated display on a screen as it\u2019s natural for a computer image. Screens for print, seeing blocks of dots is unacceptable in most situations, especially with text, so you have to have a DPI of 300 for them to be so fine that you can\u2019t see individual ones and edges become smooth. (Most home printers work at the 1200-2400 DPI range to allow for a greater range of colours. Why they do it is for a different article.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Why would having too low a DPI image affect the quality of your printing? When a printer has to print an image it converts everything on the page into a series of dots that the printer uses to pick what colours to put on to it. If there are not enough dots for it to use, then it has to make calculations to fill in the missing dots, and no matter how good the system, these \u2018guesses\u2019 are always obvious to the eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

How to get the best from internet images for printing<\/span><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There are several different methods of getting online images to work for your printing needs. The first is to know how to work out their natural size.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Natural image sizes for printing images from the internet<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

12px equals 1mm of photo quality print. 8px equals 1mm of acceptable graphics print<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

To have nice smooth images in print you need about 300DPI which would be 300 pixels for every 2.5cm of image.That translates to 12px per millimeter or 120px per centimeter. If you need just acceptable quality then you only need 200dpi or 200px per inch which is 80 pixels per centimetre or 8 pixels per millimeter. This is a great way to work out how large an image you need to make a print of a given size or working out how large you can make an image before it looks grainy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n