A. This question comes up often so if you’re wondering, everyone else is too! The purchase of any product comes with the same “high resolution” images that were used. They may be printed in small to large sizes and come with a signed release allowing you to make reprints for personal use.  Your lab will likely ask to see the release before they will fulfill your order. Below are a few technical terms to add to your vocabulary:

DPI or PPI (Resolution): The number of “dots” or “pixels” in a single inch. The more dot’s the higher the quality of the picture (more resolution, more sharpness and detail… ). The easiest way I can explain resolution is to say a higher resolution means an image displays more detail (or is capable of displaying more detail) when printed. A larger DPI/PPI means higher resolution. The images we deliver are 300 DPI/PPI, which is the highest standard for portrait printing.

Image Size: Image size refers to the dimensions of the image (pixels, dots, width, height, …). The images we deliver are 5175×3450 (17 x 11 inches) — which is large enough to print to sizes much larger.

File Size: File size is how many kilobytes or megabytes the image is. Each JPEG image we deliver is about 4-8 MB.

Below is a visual example of the difference in size. The large image to the left is a “high resolution” image. The small thumbnail image is the size of a “low resolution” image in comparison to the high resolution image. The image on the right is the same image as the thumbnail, but it’s scaled up so you can see what it would look like if printed. If you were to print both sizes of images onto professional paper, this is what they’d look like side-by-side. Obviously, you’d want to hang the left image (the high resolution one) on your wall!

Hopefully this has helped you get a little clearer on the differences between sizes, resolution and why they print differently. The high resolution images are delivered with instructions on how to get the best results when printing them. However, even though you have the tools to make your own prints, you may still want to consider ordering your favorites through us. 

Any more questions on DPI, PPI, Resolution? Ask us!