A Little Graphic Clarity
May 19th, 2011 by Jenn
A Little Graphic Clarity By Jennifer Walling
Though somewhat technical in nature, it is important to have a basic understanding of how PPI ppi (points per inch) and DPI dpi (dots per inch) work. These two principles are responsible for how the way your images will look in a browser onscreen, as a digital copy or a physical one.
Explained at it’s very simplest, think of Georges Seurat’s paintings. He used pointillism, or dots of colour, next to each other to build his images. So close up, the painting looks like this.
Step back a bit from the painting, and you now see the figure of a person resolving on the canvas like this.
Step even farther further back, and you can no longer tell at all that this painting is created from tiny coloured marks placed next to one another. A more modern example of this concept is the Lite -Brite™. You create images using small coloured plastic pegs placed next to one another.
Even though your image may not start out in such a manner, it eventually is converted into ‘pointillism’ when used digitally.
