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The next step in mastering Photoshop is understanding resolution.
So I would like to start out by opening up an image.
I am going to go into the Chapter 3 folder here in Bridge, in my Content panel, double
click that folder, and then double click the image size folder,
and I am going to double click the catalog blade.PSD image that's in this folder.
So we have the catalog blade image open here now in Photoshop and basically as you know,
all digital images are made up of pixels. So we are going to go ahead and zoom in on
this guy, really, really zoom in, and really get in there close,
and you could start to see all these tiny little squares.
So that's what makes up all of our images and all of our graphics that we create here
in Photoshop. So this is not Vector artwork, this is not
based on a system of mathematical curves, like Vector artwork is.
It is resolution dependent, that means that we are working with pixels.
So the way we size this guy and the Resolution setting that's currently applied is going
to affect the way the file is output; whether we are using it for the Web or we
are using it for Print. Now generally, a Web graphic is saved at 72
ppi, Pixels Per Inch. That's how pixels are measured here in Photoshop,
and a high resolution graphic for print output is saved generally at 300 ppi.
So how do we find out what our current resolution is for this image?
I am going to press Command+0 to fit this in the window, Ctrl+0 in Windows.
One way is by viewing information in the Info palette,
which I currently already have displayed over here in the upper right of my screen.
Now it doesn't say it automatically, you have to actually tell it to give you the information
that you want. So if I click on the button in the upper right
corner to show my Palette Options; select the Palette Options setting there
to display this dialog box, you will notice at the bottom where it says Status Information,
we can choose what to display at the bottom of the Info palette.
If I choose Document Dimensions underneath where it says Document Profile, you can actually
choose to display the Dimensions in addition to the Document Profile information.
Now although it doesn't say resolution in here, it is going to show us the resolution,
the ppi setting. So if I click OK, notice here are the dimensions;
it's pretty big, 34, approximately, inches x 32.5 at 72 ppi.
So this is low resolution, but at a huge size. You can also find out what your resolution
is at the very bottom of the Document Window. Down here if I click on the right triangle
and choose Show, rather than showing Document Profile, I can
choose to show Document Dimensions. It's not like the Info palette where we can
see both, but if I choose Dimensions, I can replace what's there,
which is currently the Color Profile that's assigned to this image, Adobe RGB, a good
profile, wide gamut. We now have the same information that we just
displayed in the Info palette. So that's another place where you can get
that information. The third way, and I think the best way, is
to refer to the Image Size dialog box. That can be displayed by choosing Image Size
from the Image menu, or using this keyboard shortcut, which I use all the time,
Option+Command+I, or Alt+Ctrl+I, that brings up this dialog box, and now we have all kinds
of different numbers in here. At the top we have the current File Size,
meaning how large is this file, how much space is it taking up on our drive.
We have the current Pixel Dimensions; so if you are creating Web graphics, this is the
area of the dialog box that you might want to focus on, and then the Document Size, which
really has to do with printing. So you have got Width and Height, and then
the current resolution. So low resolution graphic, add some pretty
large dimensions for an image like this. These are the three different places that
you can get this information. Now that you know where you can get this information,
I would like to show you in the next movie how you can actually resize the image and
how that can affect not only your file size up here, but also
your dimensions, and the proper way to do it and then the ways
that you shouldn't do it.