Inspiring

Question

Increasing resolution but keep size same

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
May 9, 2022
3 replies
1905 views

I have to design some posters for digital billboards at 960px by 480px.

I chose InDesign and it is easy to lay things out.

The client wanted at a highest possible quality.

So i exported it at 600ppi. the client replied saying the size is 12,000 x 6,000 pixels.

How do i keep it at 960 by 480 px and keep it at the best possible quality?

How to

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rob day

Community Expert

Hi @Summayah5FC7 , If you create an InDesign document sized to 960 x 480 px and set your Rulers to Inch units you will see that its dimensions in Inches is 13.333" x 6.6667":

If you then export the document to a JPEG image its pixel dimensions will be the dimensions in inches multiplied by the Pixel Per Inch (PPI) Resolution you choose in the Export dialog. So in the case above the exported pixel width would be 13.333 x 600 = 8000.

Or, if you setup a document to be 20" x 10", the Exported pixel width at 600PPI would be 12000 pixels. Sounds like your document is setup as 20" x 10"?

S

Summayah5FC7Author

Inspiring

My document is setup as 960 by 480 pixels. See below in pixels and inches.

S

Summayah5FC7Author

Inspiring

But when i export this as a png at 300 ppi. The image dimensions become 4000 by 2000. Please see below.

Alexandre Becquet

Community Expert

Hello, it's not really for indesign but it could ;).

Ok, the goal is to show an image on a digital billboard and your client want he highest quality but does i known the specifications?

960px by 480px isn't a great size! if i do a quick convertion in cm, we are at 9,6cm by 4,8cm! And you can do what you want if the recommandation is 960px by 480px it's useless to do what you did.

Check this link about resolution 😉 it's in french but with the translation i think you'll understand 😉

Can you show us the effective PPI in Indesign?

S

Summayah5FC7Author

Inspiring

So do you recommend i do this in Illustrator?

The previous digital billboard job i did was in illustrator. I thought i'd do this job in InDesign as it would save me alot of time.

could you send me the link you mentioned?

Thank you

rob day

Community Expert

If the required pixel dimensions are 960 x 480, it doesn’t matter which application you use, the image quality is going to be limited by the pixel dimension requirement.

E

Eugene Tyson

Community Expert

InDesign will export at 72 ppi to image formats.

Open the image in Photoshop and resample the image to 600ppi.

The pixels will revert to the size 960x480

But why are you doing this at 600ppi?

S

Summayah5FC7Author

Inspiring

I'm doing it at 600ppi because (in my mind) it's just a higher resolution and the filesize is not as large.

James Gifford—NitroPress

Legend

If this thread hasn't made it clear, pixels are pixels. An image is X pixels wide by Y pixels high; the notion of PPI is all but a phantom value. You can set the same image to 72 or 100 or 600 or 1200 ppi and it will be exactly the same image, and most applications (including digital billboards) will handle it exactly the same way... by its fixed pixel dimensions.

Just about the only time PPI/DPI really makes any difference is when translating a digital image to print, in which case you want X pixels per printed inch (usually 300) to get an optimum resolution. A few digital apps use PPI for scaling over and above how the layout or default handles it, but not many.

The PPI setting of your 960x480 pixel image is almost wholly irrelevant UNLESS the digital display tech demands an arbitrary PPI setting for some reason.

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