🚀 go-pugleaf

Adrian,

You are missing nothing, except that I would word it a little differently.

Image QUALITY has nothing to do with the dpi. It really has more to do with the total number of pixels in the image. People in the preprint business of scanning and retouching images often talk about the total number of pixels across the image's width and height rather than the dpi. The dpi setting has to do with the size of the image when it is printed; however, the dpi of a printed image may NOT be the same as the dpi setting stored with the image. In your case, your 96 dpi image is the SAME as your 300 dpi image because the two have the same number of pixels and each pair of corresponding pixels have the same values of RGB or CMYK. When you imported the 96 dpi image at 300 dpi, you are telling Frame to SCALE the image on the page so that its resolution is 300 dpi. When you imported the 300 dpi image, you told Frame to display it as is, that is, at its stored resolution of 300 dpi. Hence, Frame displays both images the same, because you have told it to. The quality of the two images is the same, because they have the same number of pixels.

If you had imported the 96 dpi image at 96 dpi, Frame would have printed at a larger PHYSICAL size than the 300 dpi image; BUT the two images would have the same quality; the 96 dpi image would not appear fuzzier than the 300 dpi image. Furthermore, if you had imported the 96 dpi image at 600 dpi, it would be printed at half the size of the 300 dpi image, had the SAME quality as the 300 dpi image, would not be fuzzier than the 300 dpi image, but would be harder to see because of the acuity of the human visual system. Thus, there is a limit to how high an image's resolution should be.

When Art suggests not lowering the resolution of your images, he is referring to two images at the same physical size but different dpi. That is, a 3 by 4 inch image at 96 dpi is fuzzier than the SAME 3 by 4 inch image at 300 dpi, because the two images have different number of pixels. Think of setting up a camera at a fixed place to take a picture. You take two pictures: one at 96 dpi and a second one at 300 dpi. They both capture the same content (say two trees and a house), at the same physical size, but at different resolutions.

In your case, I would not worry about the dpi setting stored in the image. Just import it into Frame and scale it there by percentage or by setting the dpi, which is the dpi of the printed image, not that stored within the image file. The image quality will not change during the import, no matter what the dpi setting or the Frame scaling is.

Van