Hello. This is Ochiai, the designer.

Today we're going to talk about resolution.

I'm sure everyone has heard the word "resolution" before.

But if someone asked you exactly what it means, many of you probably wouldn't be quite sure.

Resolution indicates the number of dots contained within one inch.

The illustration on the left has a low resolution, while the one on the right has a high resolution.

As you can see, the fewer the dots, the rougher the image becomes.

So does that mean the higher the resolution, the better?

What matters with resolution is that it's appropriate for the purpose.

For anything displayed on a digital screen, such as a computer monitor or a smartphone, 72 dpi is optimal.

Many of you may think that 72 sounds awfully low, but raising the resolution any higher will not improve the image quality on a monitor.

If anything, it just makes the file heavier and less convenient.

Photos taken with a smartphone are basically set to 72 dpi, which is optimal for online use.

The resolution of a home printer is basically 200 dpi.

That's more than twice what a web environment requires.

So when you print with a home printer, the photo ends up less than half the size it appeared on screen.

And if you force it to print at the same size, the image quality naturally becomes rough.

Printed materials such as flyers require the highest resolution of all, at 350 dpi.

Monochrome materials require an even higher resolution, but

if you want to use a photo taken with your smartphone in printed materials, the size will end up roughly one third of the original.

Recent smartphones produce photos with large dimensions even at 72 dpi, so depending on the size you need, you can of course use them for printed materials too!

That was a brief look at resolution.

It's different from pixels, too, which makes it really confusing...!1