I have an image I designed that I want to print and under Image > Image Size on Photoshop I get:
2400x3000 pixels | 8x10 inches | 300 ppi
Does that mean that when printed it's going to to be 8x10 inches, regardless of the printer (the machine) or the printing shop (the person) that I hire to print it for me, or if it's going to be printed on paper or a plain t-shirt etc.?
As long as the pixels dimensions, the document size and the resolutiondo not change, the image when printed will always be 8x10 inches? Is that correct?
Pixels themselves have no dimension and DPI/ PPI info is merely an abstract meta-information used as a basis for calculations. Outside specific programs that honor DPI flags therefore this stuff becomes meaningless with regards to how it translates to physical dimensions for reproduction. So no, it will not always print at the intended correct size. You have to give that information to whoever is going to print it and/ or advise him to use a program that makes use of the metadata stored in formats like JPEG, TIFF and a few others. You could save it as a GIF and use an odd image viewer for printing and the nyour whole procedure would break down - GIFs have no DPI and such a viewer may not care for it, anyway.
I see. Well, most printing places I've been to, for some reason, suggest a PNG file with a minimum dpi of 300. So, given that dpi is "locked" at 300, and given that I want my picture to be 8x10 inches when printed, all we (the printer and I) have to do, is experiment with pixel dimensions on several test prints, just until we reach the desired print size of 8x10?
Why is it locked. It is not locked any print service can easily change the document DPI Resolution setting it a setting it not locked. To change the size the image will print. Also if you send them an image with an 8:10 aspect ration 4:5 and want 4x6 prints a 2:3 aspect ratio not only will the print service change the Image DIP resolution they will crop your 4:5 aspect ratio image to a 2:3 aspect ration and print the cropped image.
In Photoshop Image resize resample NOT checked. Change the DPI setting you will see the print size change the file size and number of pixels will not change.
The short answer to the first part of your question question is yes if you set you PSD file to 8x10 inches 300ppi it will be printed at 8x10 inches.
The dimensions determine the actual size of the file but we create a high resolution files for print (which is usually 300ppi or more) so that the image prints to a high quality.
Our screens can only display 72ppi at a time this is why a print files of 300ppi appears just over 4 times bigger on screen.
As has been stated, image print sizes are somewhat “flexible” and there is no foolproof method when blind exchanging data (never discount a print shop using inappropriate settings, it happens more than you would think). Some file formats and saving methods retain PPI metadata and others don’t, or the end user may ignore etc.
Even saving your image as a “document” using Photoshop PDF format would have no guarantee of final reproduction size, however it would be less ambiguous.
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