1 Correct answer
In my head I thought if one makes a page a certain pixel width and height thats it, for website use, one cannot have different dpi for that, but I stand corrected.
By @Merlin3
That is the correct answer. All screen media (web, mobile, video/TV) measure frame dimensions in pixels only; ppi/dpi is not important and not useful in any way.
So the answer to the question should be “any or no ppi.” However, it’s not really that simple because in some ways Photoshop is still too tightly bound to o
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In my head I thought if one makes a page a certain pixel width and height thats it, for website use, one cannot have different dpi for that, but I stand corrected.
By @Merlin3
That is the correct answer. All screen media (web, mobile, video/TV) measure frame dimensions in pixels only; ppi/dpi is not important and not useful in any way.
So the answer to the question should be “any or no ppi.” However, it’s not really that simple because in some ways Photoshop is still too tightly bound to old print units, so it won’t let you work in a “no ppi” document. The short answer is that for screen media, in Photoshop set documents to 72 ppi. The longer explanation for that is below.
Just wondered why 8pt text was looking good on one page and minute on another !
the good one was 1920x1080 300dpi and the minute (small) one was 1920x1080 96dpi.
By @Merlin3
Because “points” is typically a print dimension, not a screen dimension. All print dimensions are relative to a real world print size, such an inches or centimeters. Inches means nothing on screen media, because for example 1920 x 1080 px image can appear 3 inches wide on a smartphone, 10 inches wide on a laptop display, 20 inches wide on a desktop display, and 3 feet wide on a large TV. So there is no fixed ppi for screen media, because the width of the image in inches cannot be the same on all screens.
However, in print, where the final size is fixed, you must use ppi. 1920 x 1080 at 300ppi can only means 6.4 inches wide (because 1920 pixels divided by 300 pixels per inch equals 6.4 inches), and 1920 x 1080 at 96dpi can only mean 20 inches wide (1920/96).
8-point type will appear the same size on both of those documents at their inch dimensions, meaning if you view the 6.4-inch wide and 20-inch wide 1920 x 1080 px documents at the same magnification percentage (which ignores inches), the 8-point type is the same size relative to one inch on both documents. But you are not printing, so you shouldn’t be using inches or pixels per inch. However, the points unit of measure is relative to the ppi (which is pixels per inch, the unit you don’t need to use), so when both 1920 x 1080 documents are viewed at the same size (in other words, without accounting for the fact that one is much larger than the other in inches), the 8-point type will probably look smaller on the document that is supposed to be more inches long. So things get screwed up by using a print-based unit such as points (which depends on inch sizes and ppi) in a medium that does not use ppi.
How do you get around that? Two ways:
Keep all your screen-media documents at the same ppi. It shouldn’t matter which ppi, but in Photoshop it does matter if you specify type in points, because it converts points to pixels using the document ppi and the Points/Picas size in Preferences (see picture below). So in Photoshop, 72 ppi is a reliable resolution to use for screen media, because that is the number Photoshop will use to convert points to pixels.
or
Specify type in pixels instead of points. Because this is screen design, measured in pixels, if you enter type size in pixels (for example, type “36px” instead of “36pt”), then the type looks the same size across documents measured in pixels and viewed at the same magnification. However, you may find that after typing in “100px” for a font size, Photoshop may convert that to points at the current ppi.
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