TIL I was making my digital art way too small for prints

I tried to order a 16x20 print of a piece from a shop in Portland and they sent it back looking all fuzzy. The guy there told me my file was only 72 DPI and I needed at least 300 for that size. I'd been saving everything at the default screen setting for years. Has anyone else had to go back and redo a bunch of old work for printing?

3 comments

3 Comments

betty_coleman25d ago

Oh man, my friend did the exact same thing with her wedding invitations. She designed these beautiful custom maps for all the guests, sent the file off to the printer, and got back a box of blurry mess. She had to redo the whole thing from scratch in a panic two days before they needed to be mailed. It's such a common trap with that default 72 DPI setting. I bet half the artists I know have a similar horror story.

averyc9425d ago

Sounds like a printer problem, not a design one.

garcia.wren25d ago

Honestly I used to think it was just cheap printers too. But then I saw a perfect print job go blurry because of that DPI thing. Now I always double check the file settings before sending anything out.

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