Digital photo print resolution tutorial

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If you want to print out digital photos its important to use a high enough resolution photo for the size you want to print and that is an important factor to think about when buying a new digital camera. This Print Resolution Tutorial will hopefully help you.

If you are not sure how many megapixel your camera is then please use my guide to megapixels to help you work it out.

Standard print sizes

Wanted Size	Low Quality 100dpi	Medium Quality 200dpi	High Quality 300dpi
6 in x 4 in or 15 cm x 10 cm	At least 0.50 Megapixel	At least 1.25 Megapixel	At least 2.50 Megapixel
7 in x 5 in or 17.5 cm x 22.5 cm	At least 0.50 Megapixel	At least 1.50 Megapixel	At least 3.50 Megapixel
8 in x 6 in or 20 cm x 15 cm	At least 0.50 Megapixel	At least 2.25 Megapixel	At least 4.50 Megapixel
10 in x 8 in or 25 cm x 20 cm	At least 1.00 Megapixel	At least 3.50 Megapixel	At least 7.75 Megapixel

High quality print sizes by megapixel

1 Megapixel	3.8 x 2.9 Inches	9.8 x 7.3 Centimetres
2 Megapixel	5.4 x 4.1 Inches	13.8 x 10.4 Centimetres
3 Megapixel	6.7 x 5.0 Inches	16.9 x 12.7 Centimetres
4 Megapixel	7.7 x 5.8 Inches	19.6 x 14.7 Centimetres
5 Megapixel	8.6 x 6.5 Inches	21.9 x 16.4 Centimetres
6 Megapixel	9.4 x 7.1 Inches	23.9 x 18.0 Centimetres
7 Megapixel	10.2 x 7.6 Inches	25.9 x 19.4 Centimetres
8 Megapixel	10.9 x 8.2 Inches	27.7 x 20.7 Centimetres
9 Megapixel	11.5 x 8.7 Inches	29.3 x 22.0 Centimetres
10 Megapixel	12.2 x 9.1 Inches	30.9 x 23.2 Centimetres
11 Megapixel	12.8 x 9.6 Inches	32.4 x 24.3 Centimetres
12 Megapixel	13.3 x 10.0 Inches	33.9 x 25.4 Centimetres
13 Megapixel	13.9 x 10.4 Inches	35.2 x 26.4 Centimetres
14 Megapixel	14.4 x 10.8 Inches	33.6 x 27.4 Centimetres
15 Megapixel	14.9 x 11.2 Inches	37.9 x 28.4 Centimetres

Please note:

Its also important to think about cropping images, its amazing how much difference you can make to photos by trimming them down a bit, but when you do that you lower the resolution. Cutting an image down lets you focus on just one thing in the photo and is also a sneaky way of increasing the zoom of your camera, so if you only want to print high quality photos at 6 inches x 4 inches then you could get a 9 megapixel camera with a 10 times zoom and then crop the image to half the size, it would have the same effect as using a 20 times zoom and the print quality would still be perfect. Due to things like that its always best to go for a higher megapixel camera that you actually need if you can afford to.

Copyright

This guide was 100% created by Dean Thorpe of Aspex Design, so please feel free to link to it if you think it is useful, but PLEASE do not copy it and use it on your own site, it took a lot of work to create. If you want to print it out for educational reasons then that is fine, just don't claim you created it or make profit out of it. Sorry to sound negative, but I have had a few bad experiences with people selling my creations on eBay!