Changing Your Resolutions

Today's tutorial is changing resolutions.I'm not talking about your personal resolutions, like your new year's resolutions. I'm talking about the resolutions of your pictures and digital elements. As defined by PhotoFinish, "Resolution is the interpreter between the physical world of inches and the digital world of pixels." Pixels is short for picture elements. A pixel is the smallest unit in a computer image or display. Every image on your computer is made up of a colored grid of pixels. So when you work with digital pictures [photographs, embellishments used in digital scrapbooking, etc.] you work with pixels.

Usually the digital papers and embellishments are made with a resolution of 300 pixels. The more pixels in a picture, the higher the resolution. The higher the resolution and the more files you have open super slows down your computer! If you have 5 pictures of 300 pixels each that would slow down your work time tremendously.

So here's what I do... I always change the resolution of each element I use to 150 ppi (pixels per inch) or dpi [dots per inch]. Go to IMAGE, then IMAGE SIZE, then DOCUMENT SIZE. Under RESOLUTION, change the size to 150 pixels per inch. Remember to use the same resolution for all elements you are going to use on a layout. Otherwise, you'll find that some elements [like a flower] might be larger than your background paper.



When closing the files you used, remember to not use "SAVE" otherwise you will be changing the resolutions of your originals.

Once you have completed a layout, then you can merge all your layers into one layer and save the entire layout using .jpg instead of .png. You can also change the jpeg resolution to 72. This is the resolution I use when uploading pictures into my websites.

If you have questions about this simple tutorial, please leave me a comment. Thank you.