I cover this topic in more detail in my 72 ppi web resolution myth tutorial, and we'll look at it again at the end of this tutorial. It has no effect at all when viewing the image on screen. It's important to understand up front that image resolution only affects the size of the printed version of the image. So if pixels are the tiny squares of color that make up all digital images, and image size is the number of pixels in the image from left to right (the width) and from top to bottom (the height), what is image resolution? Image resolution controls how large or small the photo will print based on its current image size. But as you gain more experience with resizing images, you'll find that knowing the total number of pixels beforehand will give you a good idea of how large you can print the image, as we'll see next when we look at image resolution.ĭownload this tutorial as a print-ready PDF! What is image resolution? You don't really need to know the total number of pixels. To figure out the total number of pixels in the image, we just need to multiply the width and height values together. Instead, we see what looks like a continuous image, with light, shadows, colors and textures all blending together to create a scene that looks much like it would in the real world ( image from Adobe Stock): In Photoshop, when viewing an image at a normal zoom level (100% or less), the pixels are usually too small to notice. Much like how a painting is made from individual brush strokes, a digital image is made from individual pixels. The term pixel is short for 'picture element', and pixels are the tiny building blocks that make up all digital images. For now, let's start at the beginning by learning about pixels, image size and resolution!ĭownload this tutorial as a print-ready PDF! What are pixels? We'll be learning all about image resizing in later lessons in this chapter. And we'll finish off by learning how image size and image resolution work together to control the print size of your image! We'll even debunk a popular belief that resolution has anything to do with the file size of your image. Then we'll learn how pixels are related to image size. We'll start by learning about pixels, the basic building blocks of all digital images. Having a solid understanding of how pixels, image size and resolution are related to each other is essential for getting the best results when resizing images, both for print and for the web. In this tutorial, I'll introduce you to three important topics that are essential for working with digital images in Photoshop, and these are pixels, image size and image resolution.

Pixelshop change image size