What we see on the computer monitor is not really what will be seen when the photo is printed out. To understand the process, it’s important to understand how the pixel data of images works. Pixel dimension is the number of pixels along the height and width of a bitmap image. The display size of an image on the monitor is determined by the pixel dimensions of the image plus the size and setting of the monitor. Printer resolution means the number of ink dots per inch (dpi) produced by all laser printers. PPI is a measure of how an image is printed on paper, and is sometimes referred to as “resolution”. To provide high quality prints we need to set the appropriate dpi parameters of the digital images so that what we see on the monitor could be close to what we see on paper. What you printer would really want is a digital image of sufficient pixel dimensions to be able to meet their required pixels per inch requirement (usually 300 ppi) at the dimensions of the printed image. The latter is critical, and to find out if your image meets their ppi criteria, you have to know the destined printed size. For example, using the 300 ppi criteria, if the image is to be printed 8 inches in size, then your digital image has to be a minimum of 2,400 pixels in that dimension – it’s simple arithmetic (2400 pixels / 300 ppi = 8 inches). DPI is also important for scanning – it is used to adjust the amount of detail of the scan. The dpi setting of the scanner relates to the final pixel size of the scanned image. If you put a 5″ x 7″ photo on the scanner and scan it at 300 dpi, the resulting digital image will be 1500 x 2100 pixels in size (5″ x 300 = 1500 and 7″ x 300 = 2100). In this case, dpi will be more important for the image quality, since the higher the scanner dpi setting, the more information is being collected. Use ImageConverter Plus to set the desired dpi settings to prepare your images for print.