Resolution basics you can't ask about now

Hello. This is Tsukamoto, the designer.
You often hear the word "resolution," don't you?

Does it kind of mean image quality or something like that?

Many people probably think along those lines.

And if that's the case, then the higher the resolution the better, right?
Some people end up thinking that too.

What?! That's not it? Then what on earth is resolution anyway?!

Resolution (dpi) is a figure that indicates how many dots are contained within one inch.
It stands for dots per inch, abbreviated as dpi. These dots correspond to pixels.
It's the same idea as when you hear "so many megapixels!!"

An image is built up from a large collection of dots. With old games, for example, it was easy to see that they were made up of dots.

Like the first Dragon Q**st… ah, nostalgic. The good old days.

These days there are lots of images with really beautiful quality. So naturally, higher resolution must be better, right???

Many of you might think so, but…

Higher resolution isn't necessarily better—what matters is that it's appropriate.

○ The resolution displayed on digital screens is 72 dpi to 150 dpi.

No matter how high you make the resolution, it will only be displayed at 72 dpi on screen. So posting high-resolution photos on social media is pointless—it only slows down the display speed…

○ The appropriate resolution for home printers is roughly 200 dpi. That's about 2.7 times the resolution needed for the web.

○ The resolution required for commercial printing is 350 dpi and up. The required resolution differs from one printing company to another, so be sure to check. Monochrome printing requires an even higher resolution.

Photos taken with a smartphone camera are basically 72 dpi. Simply put, if you want to print at 350 dpi, you'll need an image three times larger.
I hope this helps if you ever want to use photos taken with your smartphone (^^♪

You often see cameras advertised with "so many megapixels!"—and that does matter quite a bit if you want to print large. But if it's too high, the data just becomes heavy, so it's important to set an appropriate size.

With cameras, the sensor is actually more important, so it's not necessarily true that higher pixel counts or resolutions always mean better-looking images.

To sum up: what matters is that the resolution is appropriate. And it will look better that way, too.

Too big is no good either! Of course, too little is a problem as well…

And that's the story of resolution!