# Lightroom Resolution?



## leopardforest

I use Lightroom for processing my photos and I was wondering if anyone knows what it the resolution is when you export an image. When you export an image one of the options is to change the resolution in dpi. So my question is, is it better to have a higher dpi for prints or for online? 


Thanks


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## Sw1tchFX

300 for print, 72 for online.


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## leopardforest

what happens if i were to go higher for printing? Would it make any difference?


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## Garbz

There is no DPI setting in lightroom's export. The one I think you are referring to is the PPI setting (pixels per inch) DPI relates to how many dots a printer lays down, where as PPI is the actual resolution.

Now when you're exporting PPI really doesn't matter. I have never changed this setting. Lightroom will export in the original photo resolution unless you check the box "Constrain Maximum Size". PPI is just a number written to an image header to give software a rough idea of the real size of the image in inches, but this can always be changed when printing anyway.

My advice is to ignore the PPI setting. When it comes time to print then you need to look at this. In whatever software you print the PPI should be a ratio of the number of pixels per inch. So if you have a 1200x800 image and you print at 200 pixels per inch the resulting picture would be 6x4" Even then in most software lightroom included you can just set this to 300 and ignore it as when selecting the final print size the software should automatically update either the PPI number if it does not resample the image, or change the resolution to reflect the size and PPI if it does resample.

For printing you want this to be 300, though 150-200 still produces acceptable larger results.


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