submitting to scbwi DRAW THIS first time, confused about dpi vs ppi (deadline to enter today)

Coley

I'm entering a piece for the scbwi draw this (I just joined). Anyhow they said the file size needs to be 72 dpi.

when I go to photoshop, under image size, it tells me the resolution is at 300 pixels per inch. Do I change it to 72? Sorry to ask what is probably a simple question but I am confused lol! It seems like such a poor quality image size but apparently if you don't meet submission guidelines you're excluded from the online gallery.

THANK YOU to anyone in the know who replies

xin li

@Coley Yes. You can do that. But remember to save the file as a new file so you do not lose the larger version of your file.

Coley

@xin-li thanks I was just worried it was ruining the resolution of my image but I guess it seems to be what they want. thanks again

Jeremy Ross

Hi @Coley, I have submitted several pieces for the SCBWI monthly challenges, and never scaled down the resolution to 72dpi. All were submitted at 300ppi.

Haven’t won yet, but you can’t win if you don’t try... Love your work by the way ; Good luck!

Coley

@Jeremy-Ross Oh thank-you! I'm going to re-send it LoL. I hope they don't post it twice

TessaW

@Coley I'm pretty sure DPI generally only matters for printing right? 72 dpi looks great for web viewing to my knowledge, so assuming that they are just viewing your image online, they are probably just trying to deal with images that are more manageable in their file size. I think 72 dpi will load much more quickly for web viewing than 300 dpi will? Just a guess.

Coley

@TessaW thanks

deborah Haagenson

@Coley I save what I submit to SVSLearn as 72 dpi, size approx 1200 x 900 pixels. That reduces the size to about 500kb. On the computer this looks pretty clear. I keep my 300 dpi file if I need to change something or print out my image. I never work on a file in 72 dpi.

Melanie Ortins

300 dpi CMYK is standard for printing, 72 dpi RGB is standard for web. Photoshop has an option to Export for Web and you can save a jpeg (automatically in RGB, 72 dpi) and you can change the image size in pixels at the bottom and see how many MB your final image will be. That way, you're not changing the size/resolution of your original file (which I have accidentally saved over in the past!)

Coley

@Melanie-Ortins thank you for that! I understand a lot better now