jackm1943 Loc: Omaha, Nebraska

👍👍👍 I can't believe how many here still use this term in an incorrect manner.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Mitzis

How were the image files supplied to her? And how were they supplied to the web developer? If they were sent as enclosures within an email message, the email system may have automatically lowered the resolution to make the message smaller.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

You have given her very high resolution images.

People are extremely confused about PPI vs dpi. The PPI is INPUT resolution to a printer driver. The dpi is the OUTPUT resolution from a scanner or a printer.

PPI means, "How many original, created in the camera or from a raw file in post processing pixels am I going to spread over each inch of printed or displayed output?

'dpi' means, "How many scan cells am I recording per original inch of scanned copy?" (The result is stored as pixels in a file!). 'dpi' also means, "How many fine dots of various colors and sizes do I need to print to reproduce each pixel in this image file?

Every JPEG file or TIFF file has an EXIF table that contains a figure for DPI height and DPI width or X resolution and Y resolution. These values can be set to any value. In photography, they mean nothing and say even less! But in the offset printing world, they tell page layout software how large to display an image when it is "flowed" or "placed" onto a page layout. If the resolution is 72dpi, the 4016 x 5020 PIXEL image will be HUGE — 55.78 by 69.72 inches. If the resolution is 300 dpi, it will come in at 4016/300 by 5020/300 inches, or 13.39 by 16.73 inches. But in either case, the page layout artist who understands his/her software can make it fit the space allotted for it.

In short, the dpi of a file does NOT necessarily relate to a particular size. But the dimensions of the file in PIXELS determines how large you can display an image at a particular dpi. Designers who don't understand this are a dime a dozen. They just look at the file header and see a lower number than they would like, without looking at the overall dimensions of the file and realizing it will work.

File size in MB is irrelevant, too (unless you're concerned about storage or network bandwidth), because the file type and the amount of compression applied to the image, and the type of compression used, all play a huge role in determining the file size on disk. The same 16 MegaPIXEL image might be 19.8MB as a raw data file, or 95.6MB as a 16-bit TIFF image in Adobe RGB, or 8.7MB as a 90 quality JPEG image in sRGB. Changing the resolution settings won't affect the file size or pixel dimensions!

Brayyd Loc: Biloxi, MS

Thanks to everyone who commented. You all helped tremendously. This explanation is exactly what I thought, but I don't deal with this often enough to explain it to people!

Turns out, my client's boss forwarded the photo to the web designer in an email. Of course, the photo was downgraded to something unuseable. I finally encouraged the client to give the link to my file sharing site so the designer could download the photo directly. Problem solved. Again, thanks to all!

sippyjug104 Loc: Missouri

Sadly, the Client's boss did not realize that downsizing photos compress and remove data and when reopened the resultant images will no longer be as clean and sharp as the originals. Jpeg image format is the worst. For example, we shoot in RAW and then post-process. When finished they are saved as a Jpeg and given to the client. Each time the Jpeg file is opened and closed it compresses and bits of info are gone in the process. When opened the gaps in colors that were stripped and math is used to guess-ta-mate what was removed and how to artificially puts it back. Thats why we see color banding and a loss of sharpness in Jpegs that are opened and saved and shared...and shared...and shared and by the time they get to folks down the line they look pretty crummy.

JohnSwanda Loc: San Francisco

Incorrect. Merely opening, viewing, and closing JPEGs doesn't change them at all. They must be changed and saved to degrade.