kami

//ranting because reasons. with lots of fun tiem pichars!

I'm an artist. I've been an artist for a long time. I've printed my work through companies to sell. I know what's important and needed for high quality images.

Now that that's out of the way, I'm just laughing my ass off at this guy on Zazzle. He claims to have been a "graphic repro camera operator for over 20 years" thus knows what he's talking about. I've been working in the art field less than that and can say with certainty that he is wrong.

The issue? The importance of DPI. My reasoning: it's important. His reasoning: it's not.



The site is a printing company. They print images onto products. How can DPI /not/ be involved in that? Every printing company I've worked with and read about requires at least 300 dpi or they will toss you out. They know what's up. Now Zazzle panders to those who have no idea how to do anything/how anything works/what is the internet so many things they do for you. One of these things is that they automatically set the dpi for you when printing because the majority of their users probably have no idea what that is and they don't want to deal with it.

Problem 1: They automatically set it. That means that if yours is too low, they will have to increase it.
Issue with that, as I'm sure many people here know, is that increasing the size = big no-no. That will crush the quality and ruin the image.
Solution: high dpi

Problem 2: It's different for each product.
Issue with that is that now you don't know what dpi they'll set to for each one.
Solution: high dpi

I think I've gone over this exact point loads of times and then he FINALLY gets it and caves in agreement. (It's like it hurt him physically to be wrong.) However, he then goes on to bitch that dpi means nothing for pixel size and that pixel size is important. ("I can be wrong, but only a little!" - me portraying his thoughts.)



Really? ...Really?

That's the biggest fattest "DUH" I've ever seen in my life. (Well, not really, but it comes close seeing as how he does claim to be some kind of professional.)

Pixel size is important. DPI is important. Together they make a beautiful big soup of importantness. He then throws that out the window repeating that it doesn't then matter since Zazzle will resize everything for you.

To quote: "A 3000x3000 pixel image set at 72 ppi will yield the same quality here at Zazzle as will a 3000x3000 pixel image set as 300ppi, and its final ppi will not be set until Z output the file for the printer."



I feel like punching myself in the face. I think that's quicker and easier (and probably healthier) to do than deal with this guy.

If he wants thing printed like crap, so be it. I pretty much left it with that. (Nicer of course, hehe.)

"All-in-all, it takes no effort to make a larger image, or for photography, shoot at a higher quality. But if what you're doing works for you, that's fine. My posts were only to help the original poster since they asked for it." - me

TL;DR Stupid people are stupid and it hurts mah brain. I'm off to make high quality products like a boss.