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This article is from August 25, 2015, and is no longer current.

Free Photoshop Video: How Large Can I Print My Image?

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At one time or another, every Photoshop user has looked at an image and wondered: how large can I print this? The answer isn’t always easy. It depends on a lot of factors, including what kind of printing you plan on doing, how much resolution you have to work with, and the content of the image itself. It’s easy to get muddled in the details of print size, PPI, DPI, etc. Fortunately, at lynda.com there’s a free video by Julieanne Kost to help you understand how to use the controls in Photoshop’s Image Size dialog box. These are the controls you need to master to control image size, resolution, and (to some extent) quality.

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In the 3-minute video (which is part of the Photoshop CC 2015 Essential Training course), Julieanne shows how to tell the resolution of an image at any chosen print size, and preview the results you’ll get. She also shows how to see what percentage of image information Photoshop will have to create when you upsample an image. This can help you gauge how much quality you’re sacrificing when you upsample.

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So check out the video, and you’ll never wonder again how large you can print your images.

Editor in Chief of CreativePro. Instructor at LinkedIn Learning with courses on InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, GIMP, Inkscape, and Affinity Publisher.
  • Dov Isaacs says:

    Although the video gives an excellent overview of the issues involved printed size versus resolution of the image, it is often not necessarily best to do any upsampling in Photoshop!

    Why? The RIP provides the same functionality at rendering time. In fact RIPs ALWAYS resample the image (contrary to popular belief, there is no sacred value of 300dpi that avoids this). It is in fact possible that doing resampling in Photoshop (either upsampling or downsampling) and then going to print which again resamples the image will subtlety degrade the image more than if the image is not at all upsampled or downsampled in Photoshop at all!

    • Mike Rankin says:

      Dov, would that also apply in the case of PDFs exported for print from InDesign? Would you recommend turning off downsampling for color and grayscale images there if the #1 goal was to maximize image quality?

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