What is Resolution?

Terms

  • Pixel - An area of illumination on a display screen. Pixels are the building blocks of images on a screen.

    letter R in different resolutions

  • Raster Image - An image made up of pixels

    picture of man on mountain

  • Vector Image - An image made of paths. Vector image can be rescaled and will not distort like a raster images.

    picture of Holmgrown Films Logo

  • Pixels Per Inch - PPI is the measurement of the density of pixels in an inch. PPI is used to describe the resolution of an image on screen. The higher the ppi is; the higher the resolution.
  • Dots Per Inch - DPI is the measurement of the density of dots in an inch on paper. DPI is used to describe the resolution of an image in print.
  • Megapixel - is one million pixels. Megapixels are often used to describe the resolution of a digital camera. A camera that takes a picture that is 3000 pixels by 1000 pixels would be a 3 megapixel camera. 3000 x 1000 = 3,000,000 aka 3 megapixels
  • Screen resolution - is the number of pixels displayed on a screen. 1024 pixels wide by 768 pixels high is a common screen resolution.
  • Line screen aka Line per Inch aka LPI - is the measurement of how many lines of dots are printed per linear inch. There is a 2 PPI: 1 LPI ratio. Before sending an image to print; you will want to know what Line Screen the printer you are using is.