Drag and Drop 72 dpi image into 300 dpi document

Forum|Forum|3 years ago
March 10, 2023
3 replies
1622 views

Hi.

In Photoshop 2023 v24.2.0 (Windows 10) I have a 300 dpi document in which I need to drag and drop 100 images with 72 dpi resolution. For some reason, Photoshop automatically scales up images from 72 dpi to 300 dpi and they become huge in terms of pixels. For example, 1024x1344 becomes 4266x5600.

I need images to save their size in pixels. Is there a solution to this? In Photoshop 2020 everything was fine.

Thank you.

Windows

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S

Sergiy288089096md1Author

Participant

And if you place 300 ppi image into 72 ppi document it scales down the image from 4266x5600 to 1024x1344 pixels. Which doesn't make any sense. I want 1px = 1px, why Photoshop doing it? I can't believe that there is no option to switch it off.

D Fosse

Community Expert

Drag and drop (from outside Photoshop) creates smart objects. Smart objects by design honor physical print dimensions, not pixel dimensions. This is for compatibility with vector apps like Illustrator.

Lower ppi = bigger print size. That's what pixels per inch means. Fewer pixels per inch, more inches per pixel.

If you want to avoid this smart object scaling, either

make sure ppi numbers are the same, or
copy/paste instead of drag/drop. Or better yet, open the files into Photoshop and either drag or copy from within Photoshop. This will not create smart objects.

In any case I'd recommend you don't mix ppi numbers. That's fine if you understand what ppi is and what it does, but it's the source of your confusion here. Just set your base document to 72 ppi and avoid the whole problem.

S

Sergiy288089096md1Author

Participant

All your solutions will work probably, but in Photoshop 2020 I really used to be able to drag and drop a large amount of 72 ppi images into 300 ppi document. Very often I have a mix of 72 and 300 ppi images in one batch and what document resolution do I need to have to not create a mess?

D Fosse

Community Expert

Don't make smart objects!

This is the way smart objects have always worked. You remember incorrectly - or most likely, you didn't have smart objects.

This really isn't complicated. Smart objects honor physical print size, not pixel size. That's the key to the whole thing. Understand that, and this ceases to be a problem.

Images that are not smart objects - normal images - don't do this. They work by pixels and pixels only.