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Wednesday, March 12, 2014
By Chelsea P.
Ever tried to print an image that's been saved for the web and noticed that the image quality was significantly downgraded? Or, have you ever tried to enlarge an image taken with an 8-megapixel camera, or even an image taken using a cell phone, to a size of 16"x20"? If you have, you probably know that the culprit lies with the relationship between Image Resolution and Maximum Print Size. To non-photographers, these concepts can sometimes be hard to explain, since it's easy to see that an image looks perfectly fine on a computer screen at 72 pixels per inch (ppi), however, if you attempted to print that same image, more than likely the print would have visible JPG artifacting, or visible pixels.
With that said, rather than go through the motions of explaining how megapixels relates to print resolution, we've created this handy infographic that might make it easier to understand that even though you can print something at a certain size, it doesn't guarantee that it will necessarily be print quality. We hope this might help explain the concepts of how image resolution relates to print size in the future, so please feel free to share!