How can I change an internet image to 300 DPI?

Enlarging DPI for printing?

• INTRO: I'm running into some serious photo editing problems with a self-published book. All of my images are saved at 72 DPI. The images are large, so when I transfer them to Microsoft Word I desize them. Then I transfer the Word doc to a PDF. For my final PDF file, the printing company says my photos are 81 to 96 DPI (no idea where these numbers came from). The photos need to be 300 DPI. QUESTIOS: If I re-sample the images in photoshop to enlarge their DPI (and decrease their size), will this work? For example, the photos are currently 10X12”. If I resample the images to 300 dpi, they change to 2.4X3” (the perfect size). AND: When I initially moved the regular images (72 dpi) and shrank them to 2.4X3”in Word, they looked EXACTLY the same as the current 300 dpi. Both formats print fine for me via Word. So why would the initial 72-dpi-image cause trouble with the printer if it appears as a 300-dpi-image when shrunk down in Word? Is it a problem with Word or something I can't see?

• Answer:

  Please ignore the answer from 'fhotoace', who has managed to be both pretentious and incorrect. To clarify, you don't need to shoot ultra-high resolution photos if you're only printing them small in the end. It might be a good habit to always shoot at your highest res, but it's not technically necessary. You're absolutely right that you can shrink your 10x12 72dpi images so they'll be 300 dpi. And you're probably also right that it doesn't matter whether you resize it in Photoshop or Work. It's still the same total number of pixels (or dots, in printing), so the image data is the same. Your final size should be 2.4x2.88 though, if my math's right. I'm willing to bet that the reason everything's going wrong has something to do with Microsoft Word. It seems like it might be automatically storing the images at a lower resolution to save memory. However, if they print fine from your printer, then it's got to be another problem. I think what's happening is when you export your Word doc as a PDF, your images are being downsampled. If it gives you the option, make sure you export your document at the highest possible quality (e.g. lossless). If that doesn't work, ask your printer if you can send your original photographs and have them pasted in, as 'namedele...' mentioned. They might charge a fee for it, but they'll most likely be able to do it. If you're doing a lot of desktop publishing, you might want to consider investing in a layout program. I use inDesign, but I know other professionals use Quark and that works for them. Again, ignore what 'fhotoace' said; don't use a photo editing program to do layout.