The Photoshop Tip of the Week for the Clients and Friends of Ben Willmore (www.digitalmastery.com):

This week we're going to take a look at some Image Size and Resolution tips.

The resolution setting attached to an image is completely ignored when the image is viewed in a web browser. To see how large an image will appear in a browser, choose View>Actual pixels.

If you'd like to resize the image for the web, then open the Navigator palette (Window>Show Navigator) and move the slider at the bottom to the left until the image is the size you'd like it to appear in a browser. If the Navigator palette can't scale it down enough, then type Command-minus (Macintosh), or Ctrl-minus (Windows) to zoom out more. Once the image appears at the size you'd like it to be in a web browser, note the percentage listed in the bottom left corner and then Choose Image>Image Size. Turn on the Resample Image Checkbox, change the Width pop-up menu to percentage and then enter the number you noted earlier. Finally, choose View>Actual pixels to make sure everything worked out correctly.

When scanning images for use on the web, use a resolution setting somewhere around 80. Settings higher than that have the potential to make your image appear larger than the original size and lower settings can make an image appear smaller.

When a image is reproduced on a printing press, it is made out of a grid of solid black circles known as a halftone (solid Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black dots for a full color image). The spacing of these dots is known as the LPI or line screen setting. A common rule for images destined for print is that the resolution of the document should be 1.5 times the LPI setting used for output if you'd like the image to be sharp. 2 times LPI is usually used to make images appear smooth, which is good for faces where you don't want to show every pore on someone's face. If you're not sure what LPI setting will be used to output your image, then make a quick phone call to your printing company to find out. Here's a quick way to figure out the resolutions setting needed. Choose Image>Image Size and then click the Auto button. Next, enter the LPI setting that will be used when the image is output and then choose Good to use the LPIx1.5 setting, or use Best for LPIx2 and then click ok. Now look at the resolution setting and you'll see the result of doing that math.

The View>Print Size option is almost never accurate because it makes an assumption about your screen that is almost never correct (that it displays 72 pixels per inch). To get an accurate print size preview, open the Navigator palette (View>Show Navigator), choose View>Show Rulers and then hold a real ruler up to your screen. Now move the zoom slider in the Navigator palette until the on-screen ruler matches the ruler you are holding in your hand. You'll need to use a different zoom percentage for images that have different resolution settings.

Sometimes when you drag an image to another document, it appears to change size. To get a preview of how large the image will appear in the second image, zoom in or out of the image until the percentage shown in the lower left corner of the document matches the image you will be dragging it into.

Talk to you next week.

-Ben Willmore Founder, Digital Mastery