Today’s quick tutorial is dedicated to photo resolutions and why photographers are so easily confused about it. Thanks to Photographer David Bergman and his show on AdoramaTV, we can explore this ‘technical’ topic and lay it down in very easy terms!

Mr. Bergman explains: “You may have tried to upload an image online for either a book, a print, or even just a website, and were told to upload at 300dpi.”

“Here’s the most important thing to remember – the only way to determine the resolution of a digital photograph is to know the number of pixels actually in the file. There are a lot of programs like Photoshop that will tell you those dimensions, but on a Mac you can also set it to show in the finder or hit to “get info” and it will give you all those numbers.”

“If you’re asked for a file at 300DPI which is dots-per-inch, they actually mean PPI which is pixels per  inch. That tells you exactly how many pixels are squeezed into each inch of that image. If it’s going to be one inch wide at 300 pixels per inch then you only need 300 pixels across. If it’s 10 inches wide at 300ppi and you need 3000 pixels.” 

“The other big mistake that people make is that they only look at the size of the final file once it’s saved up. The  most common file format is JPEG’s and that works by compressing the image down to make it smaller for delivery. You can choose the level of compression you want and in Photoshop it goes from 0 to 12.  The lower numbers compress the file a lot more making it much smaller, but you  lose a lot of quality, so I generally like to keep my JPEG compression from around 8 to 10, but here’s the thing – no matter how much compression you apply when saving a JPEG, it doesn’t change the  actual number of pixels in the image.”

“The  resolution stays exactly the same, so I can take two images at different resolutions and easily make the higher resolution photographs into a smaller file by saving it at 8, for example,  while the other image is saved at 12.  When you look at the actual pixel dimensions of the photographs the  smallerJPG file is still the high resolution image, so whether you’re trying to print a book make a holiday card, or just send a photo to a friend –  make sure your images is on the correct resolution no matter what size the  final file is.”

For more information visit AdoramaTV YT page, and of course you can keep up with David on Instagram and Twitter @DavidBergman. LATEST UPDATE: David opened up new IGTV episodes where you can ask him questions live! find out more at http://www.AskDavidBergman.com

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Watch the full episode with David Bergman and Adorama TV: