Jump to content
You must now use your email address to sign in [click for more info] ×

Recommended Posts

 I feel I ought to apologise because I know that some will think this pedantic nonsense, but there is no escaping a simple reality - DPI is not the same as PPI, and it does not belong in any dialogue box.  The world is awash with confusion over this.  Designers, publishers, photo editing, ALL need to know PPI.  The only people that need to use DPI are the print shops and printing presses.  DPI has no place in any software in Affinity, or anywhere in the desktop publishing office or suite.  I await thine fury!..............(but I can prove it if you so must)

 

PS, the dialogue box should really range from about 90 then 180 then 260 300 360 and stop there.  360 being the absolute maximum.  No quality improvement is available or visible after 360.

Microsoft - Like entering your home and opening the stainless steel kitchen door, with a Popup: 'Do you really want to open this door'? Then looking for the dishwasher and finding it stored in the living room where you have to download a water supply from the app store, then you have to buy microsoft compliant soap, remove the carpet only to be told that it is glued to the floor.. Don't forget to make multiple copies of your front door key and post them to all who demand access to all the doors inside your home including the windows and outside shed.

Apple - Like entering your home and opening the oak framed Kitchen door and finding the dishwasher right in front you ready to be switched on, soap supplied, and water that comes through a water softener.  Ah the front door key is yours and it only needs to open the front door.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Oh dear oh dear oh dear, the article is erroneous on so many points.  The designer has absolutely NO control over DPI, this is the domain of the Printer only, we have no control,  a printer printing your photo or design at 600 DPI can have  the same quality as if the printer would print it at 4800 DPI.  We work in pixels not in dots, even home printers have different DPI but that is no concern nor does it matter, 400 DPI is redundant at the point of final design, since the printer can print that at 4800 DPI. The article has confused DPI with PPI.  And I have seen this a few times.  Colour management professionals will never subscribe to the DPI conundrum because DPI has nothing to do with what is sent to a printer.  Your print at 300 PPI, which is encoded within the software as PPI NOT DPI, is then translated and printed at a DPI resolution, 600 DPI can produce exactly the same quality image or design as a 4800 DPI Print in many cases dependent upon the quality of the work.   Besides if one must insist on using DPI nstead of PPI then 400 is pointless since 360 is the absolute maximum in todays technology.  Having anymore than 360 PPI (or DPI if you wish to call it that) does not produce any improvement in visual quality at all.

Respectfully yours

Chris

Microsoft - Like entering your home and opening the stainless steel kitchen door, with a Popup: 'Do you really want to open this door'? Then looking for the dishwasher and finding it stored in the living room where you have to download a water supply from the app store, then you have to buy microsoft compliant soap, remove the carpet only to be told that it is glued to the floor.. Don't forget to make multiple copies of your front door key and post them to all who demand access to all the doors inside your home including the windows and outside shed.

Apple - Like entering your home and opening the oak framed Kitchen door and finding the dishwasher right in front you ready to be switched on, soap supplied, and water that comes through a water softener.  Ah the front door key is yours and it only needs to open the front door.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have checked the Affinity guidlines and it appears that I am allowed to post a link, it is a completely independent link and serves only to educate, think it might be extremely useful to some people I hope it helps people reading this to understand the mis-use of this terminology.

https://99designs.ie/blog/tips/ppi-vs-dpi-whats-the-difference/

It is a pity really, photoshop users and serious photographers would never use DPI to replace the concept PPI.  It is important to segregate the two concepts, they are simply not interchangeable and their misuse is what causes the confusion ironically.  Anyway I hope this article helps.

Microsoft - Like entering your home and opening the stainless steel kitchen door, with a Popup: 'Do you really want to open this door'? Then looking for the dishwasher and finding it stored in the living room where you have to download a water supply from the app store, then you have to buy microsoft compliant soap, remove the carpet only to be told that it is glued to the floor.. Don't forget to make multiple copies of your front door key and post them to all who demand access to all the doors inside your home including the windows and outside shed.

Apple - Like entering your home and opening the oak framed Kitchen door and finding the dishwasher right in front you ready to be switched on, soap supplied, and water that comes through a water softener.  Ah the front door key is yours and it only needs to open the front door.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here is 4 pixels per inch compared to 4 dots per inch.slice1.png.2105034b1c232f606daa8032bfc0109d.png

Pixels are the entire area and a shade of grey. Dots vary in size and are solid Black. We are talking about apples and similar apples here. Any printer will tell you he would rather have a 400 PPI image to downsample to 300 or 240 or 85 DPI for printing (because customers complain about the product when they supply 85 PPI images to be printed at 85 DPI). 

Mac Pro (Late 2013) Mac OS 12.7.4 
Affinity Designer 2.4.0 | Affinity Photo 2.4.0 | Affinity Publisher 2.4.0 | Beta versions as they appear.

I have never mastered color management, period, so I cannot help with that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

400 PPI image has NO improvement over a 360 PPI image at all.  So telling the customer to downsize in itself demonstrates that the printer himself has no understanding of PPI at  ll and he thinks also that it is the same, shame on him.

 

And this is eactly where the confusion lies, a customer should never ever send anything to a printer at 85 (whatever DPI or PPI), and this is because the customer has no understanding of PPI or DPI, he thinks that dpi is the same as ppi, an image at 180 PPI will print well at 85 DPI depending on its end use.  People have to understand this difference if they do not want to be dissappointed with their printer, and any knowledgeable printer will never tell you to supply an image at DPI settings because DPI had absolutely nothing to do with your design work at all ever.  A customer can send any image at a resolution of say 240PPI and he will not generally ever know (unless he asks specifically) at what resolution the Printer firm will print at, 600,1800,2400,4800 it matters not to the designer in most cases unless he is an advertising firm or a newspaprer or magazine publisher or a billboard along the motorway.  

DPI   PPI   are TWO completely different concepts and a lot of people need to understand what is going on here.  Desktop publishers have nothing to do with DPI, I can not make this clearer.  Keeping them as the same principle or concept is where the confusion and dissappointments lay.

Microsoft - Like entering your home and opening the stainless steel kitchen door, with a Popup: 'Do you really want to open this door'? Then looking for the dishwasher and finding it stored in the living room where you have to download a water supply from the app store, then you have to buy microsoft compliant soap, remove the carpet only to be told that it is glued to the floor.. Don't forget to make multiple copies of your front door key and post them to all who demand access to all the doors inside your home including the windows and outside shed.

Apple - Like entering your home and opening the oak framed Kitchen door and finding the dishwasher right in front you ready to be switched on, soap supplied, and water that comes through a water softener.  Ah the front door key is yours and it only needs to open the front door.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Staff

Hi Chris26,
As said this subject was already discussed in several threads. Take a look at these two for reference please:
It's PPI not DPI
PPI is not DPI

Serif has opted for keeping it as DPI. There's no point in going through this discussion again. We appreciate the feedback and references/links posted but if there was plans to revert this the dev team would probably have done it by now.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ok, understand MEB, thanks.  Then maybe ''View''  ''Zoom'' drop down menu where it says pixel view, should be changed to Dot view?  Not that I am suggesting anything other than being respectfully sarcastic.  I wish you and you colleagues great success though in a so far wonderful programme as I painfully but happily wean my tootsies away from adobe creative suite.

Microsoft - Like entering your home and opening the stainless steel kitchen door, with a Popup: 'Do you really want to open this door'? Then looking for the dishwasher and finding it stored in the living room where you have to download a water supply from the app store, then you have to buy microsoft compliant soap, remove the carpet only to be told that it is glued to the floor.. Don't forget to make multiple copies of your front door key and post them to all who demand access to all the doors inside your home including the windows and outside shed.

Apple - Like entering your home and opening the oak framed Kitchen door and finding the dishwasher right in front you ready to be switched on, soap supplied, and water that comes through a water softener.  Ah the front door key is yours and it only needs to open the front door.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

An interesting thread. I think I get the distinction between PPI and DPI.

Am I correct in concluding  then that DPI is a print setting that my printer hardware or print service will control, and my image's PPI size will simply determine how large the image will display on my screen? 

In Resize/Resample Settings the control 'labeled'  DPI will in fact determine the PPI of my image and not the DPI resolution of the final print?  I don't really mind what the control is labelled as long as I know what it changes. 

The Help file description is a little confusing in that it states to use 300 DPI for professional printing. Wouldn't the printer used determine print quality? Mine is 600DPI. Or does it mean I should set the DPI control to 300 (300 PPI) for exporting Documents for use by professional printers. Or does it mean something else altogether...

Yikes maybe I don't get the distinction at all ... :$

M1 IPad Air 10.9/256GB   lpadOS 17.1.1 Apple Pencil (2nd gen).
Affinity Photo 1.10.5 Affinity Design 1.10.5 
Affinity Publisher 2, Affinity Designer 2, Affinity Photo 2 and betas.

Official Online iPad Help documents (multi-lingual) here: https://affinity.https://affinity.help/ 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, DM1 said:

Am I correct in concluding  then that DPI is a print setting that my printer hardware or print service will control, and my image's PPI size will simply determine how large the image will display on my screen? 

Yes, you have no control or say in the matter when it comes to DPI, this is solely the domain of the printer or print service.  The PPI does determine how large it is on the screen naturally, But, it also determines print quality, depending upon how much detail there is in an image, more detailed images need 240 or better 300 ppi, tonal images can do fine on 180 ppi but more is always better, however ppi dictates and controls how LARGE you can make your image, if the image came in raw at 240 ppi with 2000 x 2000 pixels and the same image came in at 240 ppi with 4000 x 4000 pixels then the latter image could be enlarged much more than the former.  (Maths needed here)

In Resize/Resample Settings the control 'labeled'  DPI will in fact determine the PPI of my image and not the DPI resolution of the final print?  I don't really mind what the control is labelled as long as I know what it changes. 

Yes, just think PPI that's it.

The Help file description is a little confusing in that it states to use 300 DPI for professional printing. Wouldn't the printer used determine print quality? Mine is 600DPI. Or does it mean I should set the DPI control to 300 (300 PPI) for exporting Documents for use by professional printers. Or does it mean something else altogether...

Two people can send their 2000 x 2000 pixel image to a printer at 300 ppi, one goes off to be printed at 2400 dpi, the other at 600 dpi, there will be little difference in quality of the final print in general, a higher dpi setting by the printer simply means that images will be sharper, and possibly more contrast, but this in general is unnoticeable for photographers.  Where it really matters is in big advertising road signs and bill boards and newspapers, dpi is how many dots of ink are squeezed into one pixel, better rather to say one inch, so if you have 300 pixels per inch you get 600 dots of ink in that one inch, as opposed to say 4800 dots or 50 dots.

Yikes maybe I don't get the distinction at all ... :$

That would not be your fault, kind regards, chris

PS, what I should have said is that with 300 PPI you can have 600 or 4800 dots squeezed into one inch, the former will have less dots per pixel, the latter more dots per pixel, but this does not affect quality for photographers, what does affect quality is the PPI, stick to 300 whenever you can and you will never go wrong, 360 is the absolute highest PPi for any photograph, this has been proven (google this one it's all out there for everybody to learn), there is no point in going higher than 360 PPI, but 300 is the perfectly acceptable and produces fine quality, so does 240 but that depends on the aesthetics of your image.

 

Microsoft - Like entering your home and opening the stainless steel kitchen door, with a Popup: 'Do you really want to open this door'? Then looking for the dishwasher and finding it stored in the living room where you have to download a water supply from the app store, then you have to buy microsoft compliant soap, remove the carpet only to be told that it is glued to the floor.. Don't forget to make multiple copies of your front door key and post them to all who demand access to all the doors inside your home including the windows and outside shed.

Apple - Like entering your home and opening the oak framed Kitchen door and finding the dishwasher right in front you ready to be switched on, soap supplied, and water that comes through a water softener.  Ah the front door key is yours and it only needs to open the front door.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 years later...

Just want to add a vote for changing the DPI label to PPI in the three affinity programs. 

Also, in reply to someone that mentioned there's no difference beyond 360 PPI and higher resolutions. That is correct for the most part with anti-aliased images.

However, It's a minor point, and no one ever works this way, but if you created a 2 bit document (forget what it's called in PShop), but it's just black or white, no gray. If you made a circle and sent that to a 1200 DPI printer you'd want the document to be 1200 PPI to get a smooth line. It's a fun exercise I had my students do. They could zoom in on the image and see the jaggies, but when it printed it was smooth. We then sent a vector file (of a circle) to the same printer and there was no difference. We then set the document to screen res (72 at the time).... 

Anyway, as many have noted PPI is the proper term for resolution of images. DPI is the term for the fidelity of a physical device (monitor or printer). 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/28/2022 at 5:23 PM, Medical Officer Bones said:

Although I am almost certain that the Affinity devs will never change this.

Considering that the DPI vs PPI discussions are about 6 years old, and Serif clearly stated his position, it is more than obvious.

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.4.0.2301
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/29/2022 at 10:04 AM, Pšenda said:

Considering that the DPI vs PPI discussions are about 6 years old, and Serif clearly stated his position, it is more than obvious.

Hope springs eternal, especially for new users!

A 5" x 5" document at 300 DPI (1500 pixels) is equal to a 10"x10" document at 150 DPI (also 1500 pixels). The DPI box is measuring Pixels Per Inch (PPI), so even the software agrees that it is measuring pixels per inch.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/27/2022 at 10:23 PM, RasterFarian said:

If you made a circle and sent that to a 1200 DPI printer you'd want the document to be 1200 PPI to get a smooth line.

There is no direct equivalence between the two things, without adding context. You may have the circle drawn at 72 ppi on a full page in Photo, then imported to Publisher and made smaller to fit a smaller frame. Publisher will print it at a higher resolution, related to how much you shrank it down. And the 72 ppi image could print in a rather smoother way at 1200 dpi.

Paolo

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/18/2018 at 9:31 AM, DM1 said:

The Help file description is a little confusing in that it states to use 300 DPI for professional printing. Wouldn't the printer used determine print quality? Mine is 600DPI.

300 dpi is a print resolution that is usually considered good for photo-quality. You can supply a higher-resolution image, but it wouldn't always make sense. You shouldn't supply one with a lower resolution.

Your 600 dpi printer will print your image at 300 dpi. It can print other elements of the page (fonts, curves) at 600 dpi.

Paolo

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The real resolution of the image is its size in pixels, not the DPI value.

All the latest releases of Designer, Photo and Publisher (retail and beta) on MacOS and Windows.
15” Dell Inspiron 7559 i7 Windows 10 x64 Pro Intel Core i7-6700HQ (3.50 GHz, 6M) 16 GB Dual Channel DDR3L 1600 MHz (8GBx2) NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960M 4 GB GDDR5 500 GB SSD + 1 TB HDD UHD (3840 x 2160) Truelife LED - Backlit Touch Display
32” LG 32UN650-W display 3840 x 2160 UHD, IPS, HDR10 Color Gamut: DCI-P3 95%, Color Calibrated 2 x HDMI, 1 x DisplayPort
13.3” MacBook Pro (2017) Ventura 13.6 Intel Core i7 (3.50 GHz Dual Core) 16 GB 2133 MHz LPDDR3 Intel Iris Plus Graphics 650 1536 MB 500 GB SSD Retina Display (3360 x 2100)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

12 minutes ago, NNN said:

The real resolution of the image is its size in pixels, not the DPI value.

Indeed, PPI has nothing to do with resolution. It only defines how much information is given to a printer in a given real world dimension, ie, inches. The less information sent per inch the poorer the quality of the printed image. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, PaoloT said:

There is no direct equivalence between the two things, without adding context. You may have the circle drawn at 72 ppi on a full page in Photo, then imported to Publisher and made smaller to fit a smaller frame. Publisher will print it at a higher resolution, related to how much you shrank it down. And the 72 ppi image could print in a rather smoother way at 1200 dpi.

Paolo

 

Yes, by reducing a real world dimension of an image you are in effect increasing resolution. I stated the example document be 5x5 inches specifically. My comment was a nit picky one referring to someone else mentioning that beyond a 300 PPI (DPI in Affinity) the data is useless. That is absolutely correct. Actually, it's dependent on the line screen you're using. If you set a smaller line screen then you can have less PPI/DPI. Likewise a higher line screen requires more resolution. 300 PPI just happens to be a good "rule of thumb." Most people just double the line screen and use that as the PPI needed. An industry standard (at least back in the day when I was working) was 150 LPI so people just doubled it and used 300 PPI. In point of fact it's 1.5 X LPI to get the necessary PPI. So if you're printing at 150 LPI you could use 225 PPI and the image would print with the same fidelity as 300 PPI.

Now, when an image is turned into little printer spots (CMYK  dots) they end up being different sizes. If you look at a printed image under a loupe or strong magnifying glass. you can observe this. Since these dots vary in size and are very small themselves you need a device with much greater physical resolution, thus printers with 600, 1200 and 2400 DPI. 

This is why this thread doesn't seem to die. PPI, DPI and LPI all have specific definitions. All deal with "dots" in some way or another, but it's important to understand the distinction if you're in print media. If you're not working in print media then it doesn't matter much. All that really matters is absolute resolution, HD, 4K etc..  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/10/2018 at 1:58 AM, MEB said:

Hi Chris26,
As said this subject was already discussed in several threads. Take a look at these two for reference please:
It's PPI not DPI
PPI is not DPI

Serif has opted for keeping it as DPI. There's no point in going through this discussion again. We appreciate the feedback and references/links posted but if there was plans to revert this the dev team would probably have done it by now.

 

 

As mentioned, I'm a new user... I'm guessing that this will keep coming up as new users come over. I thought I searched before posting. Sorry if I kicked off or added to an obsolete thread.

My final comment is that when there's a technical reason—an industry standard definition that means something—Affinity should, if possible, go with that. I'm sure the dev team know the difference so it just leaves me pondering. Legal reasons maybe? Taking on the Adobe behemoth isn't easy and I am very grateful for Affinity offering an alternative. I imagine that the more points of distinction between Adobe and Affinity the better from a legal standpoint.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/18/2018 at 12:31 AM, DM1 said:

Am I correct in concluding  then that DPI is a print setting that my printer hardware or print service will control, and my image's PPI size will simply determine how large the image will display on my screen? 

Close.

DPI refers to the the set physical capability of a device. A printer is manufactured with a certain DPI: 600, 1200, 2400 are the usual numbers. For images there's much difference between the three, but for type, vector type stuff you can see the difference depending on what's being printed (pictures with type knocked out, lots of vector etc..

PPI refers to the amount of digital information per inch you want to send to the printer.*

LPI refers to the number of lines or rows of ink dots per inch that makes up the image. Look at a magazine image under a magnifying glass and you will see how the image is created by little dots of varying sizes and colors (cmyk).

___________________________________________________________________________

*The PPI you choose is dependent on the line LPI you will be printing at. Common LPI's in the past were 85, 110, 135 and 150. Though there have experiments much greater than that, but required a lot of fuss for not that much gain in quality—diminishing returns where LPI is concerned. Not sure where we're at these days with digital printing presses.

You can determine a precise PPI by multiplying 1.5 x LPI. 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...
On 10/10/2018 at 4:58 AM, MEB said:

Serif has opted for keeping it as DPI. There's no point in going through this discussion again. We appreciate the feedback and references/links posted but if there was plans to revert this the dev team would probably have done it by now.

Using the proper term (PPI) would be a great feature of a 2.0 release.    😃   I'd upgrade just for that.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 10/1/2022 at 9:56 PM, RasterFarian said:

Hope springs eternal, especially for new users!

As an old user, I hope that the developers are concerned with more important things (like fixing reported bugs, implementing new features), than this utter triviality in the designation.

Affinity Store (MSI/EXE): Affinity Suite (ADe, APh, APu) 2.4.0.2301
Dell OptiPlex 7060, i5-8500 3.00 GHz, 16 GB, Intel UHD Graphics 630, Dell P2417H 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Dell Latitude E5570, i5-6440HQ 2.60 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics 530, 1920 x 1080, Windows 11 Pro, Version 23H2, Build 22631.3155.
Intel NUC5PGYH, Pentium N3700 2.40 GHz, 8 GB, Intel HD Graphics, EIZO EV2456 1920 x 1200, Windows 10 Pro, Version 21H1, Build 19043.2130.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...
On 10/21/2022 at 5:32 AM, Pšenda said:

As an old user, I hope that the developers are concerned with more important things (like fixing reported bugs, implementing new features), than this utter triviality in the designation.

Well, I did point out that it was sort of nit picky. But you might a good point. Fixing this is utterly trivial. No coding required...just name fields... 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

Loading...
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

Terms of Use | Privacy Policy | Guidelines | We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.