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Digital photos are made up of picture elements, or
pixels for short.
If you enlarge a digital photo sufficiently,
you can see that it ultimately consists of colored squares. Assemblages of these squares,
known as "pixels" (short for "picture elements"), are what constitute digital photos.
Simply put, resolution is the density of pixels in an image. The more pixels in a given
area, the finer the image and the greater the detail.
If you compare newspaper photos with those in magazines, the former generally look rougher than the latter. The reason
is that newspaper photos typically have fewer pixels and, thus, lower resolution. |
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The resolution of one of the photos shown below is lower than
that of the other, even though the content is the same. The greater number
of pixels in the higher resolution image makes it look more finely detailed. |
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| As an aside, the word "resolution" is used in a
variety of contexts. For example, you can choose the number of pixels that your digital camera
uses to record images. This setting is sometimes called "resolution." The same is true of printing,
where resolution is expressed in dots per inch, or dpi. Some people even go so far as to refer
to this setting as "print resolution." When you inspect digital photos with Photoshop, you'll
see that it uses units known as pixels per inch, or ppi, which it displays as "pixel/inch." |
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| Detail (Resolution) of Prints: dpi |
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Detail (Resolution) of Digital Photos: ppi |
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