Hi my first post so please be Gentle
I use Paintshop pro, have done for years, I like it but it’s RAW processing abillity is poor
Which is why I use Rawtherapee, it’s far superior. Images opened in PSP are 350dpi which makes them around 17x11.5 inches for printing, perfect for A3. After conversion to Tiff in Rawtherapee, they become 72dpi with a print size of 82 inches long, (excellent but huge). My question is, will my TIFF images suffer a loss in print quality by using ppi resizing in Paintshop pro (needs to be around 400ppi to fit A3)
Unless of course I’m missing something in my use of Rawtherapee
Thanks in advance
Just for info I tried resizing at 350ppi and set printed size to 17 inches it looks ok but still feels like a lot of messing about cheers
Dpi is meaningless from the perspective of a raw file, it’s just a conversation factor from pixels to physical units. The files exported from RT probably write 72 dpi by default, but the thing that counts are the pixels. You can modify the dpi afterwards if you like.
Hi thanks for taking the time to reply, I feel sure that in a previous version of RT when I exported as a tiff it matched the printable size of the original raw or jpg size. I have to admit though I’m no expert on the subject of dpi/ppi I understand that printing and file ppi/dpi are not the same thing, in the past when I wanted to enlarge a little I woud reduce the printed dpi, which now works brilliantly with AI. I need to read up on it
Thanks again
Dpi (Dots Per Inch) is a simple metadata field. Well, probably two fields, for x and y directions. If your chosen software doesn’t give you the option to set whatever you want, exiftoool can do it.
Hello, I’ll try to clarify some things. A tiff or a jpg or a raw has no printable size in itself. Those files have only pixels, eg. 3000x4000px.
When you are going to print, it is up to you to decide how many pixels per inch (ppi) you want to use. As a standard rule photographers print their photos at 300 ppi for prints up to A4/Letter. 300 ppi means that the pixels of the photo are spread out over the area of the printing paper with a density of 300 pixels per inch. If you print that 3000x4000px photo at 300ppi, you’ll end up with a print of 3000/300=10 inch by 4000/300=13,3 inch, or 25,4cm x 33,9cm, which is roughly A4.
If you want to make a larger print, you can lower the ppi value to 200ppi for example. Because a larger print is watched from a bigger distance, you won’t notice an important degradation in print quality. In this 200ppi case, you’ll end up with a print of 3000/200 by 4000/200 = 15x20 inch, or 38x51cm.
On the subject of dots per inch (dpi), this is a bit confusing as this notation is used for the resolution of monitors (typical monitors have a resolution of 96 dpi, not counting the newer 4K screens) and it is a printer variable: printers print with eg. 360, 720 or 1440 dots per inch, which means that the printhead places that number of ink dots per inch. The higher, the better.
So when some software says that your photo has that and that printing dimensions, that is only because that software makes a calculation, for example at 300ppi, like in RawTherapee or Art. But it is of course up to you to decide how many pixels per inch you want to spread over your output print.
