Digital Photos on XP only 72dpi

[FreddieSchwenke]

H

I am new to the whole thing of digital photos and all that. I hav
only recently purchased a digital camera (Fuji S5100/5500)

I am using Windows 2000 at home to download the photos and they al
seems fine. Last night, my father in law complained that my photo
are low resolution. He showed me on his XP PC that the photos ar
all 72dpi. I went home and checked it on my machine and Windows 200
Explorer's properties indicated that they are 300dpi. This morning
brought the photos to work where I also have XP. Here XP's Explore
reports them as 72dpi

Now, which is correct? Is it WIndows 2000 that reports them as 300dp
or XP that reports them as 72dpi or is there some conversion happenin
that I am not aware of? I used a JetFlash memory stick to bring the
to work

Surely my camera will not take 72dpi photos!

How can I copy the photos to XP in the correct resolution

Any help would be highly appreciated

Thank

Freddi

 

[Guest]

You need to RTFM.
Specifically, look up Quality settings.
Your camera is capable of any different resolutions, and has lots of
features that will only be revealed by a little study.

 

[Yves Alarie]

This camera has plenty of pixels. The resolution of your camera is in
pixels. Place your mouse pointer over the thumbnail of a photo. A textbox
will open and you will see the dimensions in pixels.
The report of 72 dpi (actually it should be ppi, pixels per inch) is the
resolution of your computer screen.
Regardless of how many pixels you have in a photo, your display presents 72
pixels per inch (some display work at 96 ppi) and the software reduces the
size of the photo so it fits on the size screen you have.
The report of 300 dpi (dots per inch) will come in depending on the software
you use. This is a common rule of thumb to print a decent print. So if the
dimensions of your picture in pixels is 3000 x 3000, you can get a very good
print at 10 x 10 and anything smaller than this. If you print above this
size you will begin to see some degradation, but probably not until you
print at 15 x 15.
If you are new to all this, visit this site
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/
and click on the "Understanding series"

 

[Guest]

Thanks, the information is helpful. However, it still does not answer the
question completely. What I would realy want to know is why the same image
(on the same memory stick) reports different resolution settings for XP and
2000. Is there anything that I can do to make XP report the same resolution?
The resolution settings on both screens are the same.

 

[Yves Alarie]

Unfortunately I don't have 2000, so I can't check this for you.
You can install a free photo editing software from here:
www.irfanview.com
Install it on your 2000 and XP computers so you can view the same photo with
the same software on both machines.
Then open a photo in irfanview and click on Image on the top bar and
Information.
The report you get should be the same on both computers.
For resolution you will see 72 DPI (dots per inch) on both machine (this is
actually the resolution of your monitor and should be PPI (pixels per inch),
but the software reports it in DPI to calculate a print size).
Then look at the Print size from DPI. The size is simply dividing the number
of pixels by 72. This will be quite a large size print, however a print of
low quality.
Change 72 to 300 in both boxes and click on Set.
You now get a much smaller size by increasing the resolution on the print.
Obviously there is a limit to this, the printer must be capable of doing it.
For example if you take your photos to places like Costco, WalMart,
Walgreen, Ritz, etc. to print they use very high quality printers and they
print at 300 to 320 dpi.

 

[Ace]

Freddie:

DPI is a meaningless number, until you print the picture (on screen or on
paper).

A 400pixel by 300 pixel picture at 72 dpi is exactly the same picture it is
if it's labeled 300 dpi. If the screen of your computer is set at 800 by
600, this picture would take up 1/4 of the pixels on the screen, no matter
what that DPI number says. If your screen *happened* to have 72 of its
pixels per inch, that's how you'd see it.

Now if you were editing it in Photoshop, and pressed print, the software
would follow your instructions and print it that big. The 72 dpi picture
would come out about 5.5 inches wide, the 300 dpi picture would print about
1.3 inches wide. Same picture. Bigger pixels. DPI label controlled the
printing size only.

And yet, if you were to place this graphic in Word, WordPerfect, InDesign,
or dozens of other publishing programs, that number would be ignored, and
the actual DPI would be determined by how big you decided to make the
picture on the page you're laying out. When you first drop it in,
WordPerfect will generally make it 1.5 inches wide by default. Most
software will use their own DPI calculation and make the image size
dependent on how many pixels there are in it. In any case, they don't care
what DPI number you've attached to the file.

In Photoshop, you can change the DPI number by changing image size with
RESAMPLE unchecked. As long as it doesn't resample, nothing really changes
in the picture.