best dpi for web design?

[EARTHPRINTS]

what is the best dpi for web graphics? if i buy some pictures @ 300 dpi does xara change them to 72 dpi or 96 dpi? or is it just best to buy at 72 or 96 dpi? it is a lot cheaper the lower dpi. thanks everyone!

[ss-kalm]

Windows OS uses 96 dpi and Mac's use 72 dpi. There is little point buying 300 dpi unless you are going to print the output. For web work 96 dpi is standard.

[juergen]

Its 96dpi for windows and 72 for macs.

Juergen

[Jimi King]

If you are buying photos you should consider how much of the photo you are going to use and whether you would need to perhaps zoom into a particular part of the photo. Even then you are probably not going to need a huge 300dpi shot.

You can usually get a shot that's around 500 to 700 pixels in size, which allows for all of the above and then to export at 96dpi. Xara Xtreme exports JPGs at 96dpi by default.

[gwpriester]

About 90+ percent of computer owners own Windows computers. Unless you are specifically creating a site for Mac users, use 96 dpi.

[BobInce]

dpi settings are irrelevant on the web and will be ignored by web browsers, which will display your images at 1:1 pixels. Xtreme may internally think that a pixel is 1/96 of an inch, but that information is meaningless when it comes to exporting a web page.

if i buy some pictures @ 300 dpi does xara change them to 72 dpi or 96 dpi?

Xtreme exports images at whatever pixel size you see when you drop them on your page. When exporting for web, it tries not to give any dpi information, as it's irrelevant. (ie. no pHYs chunk in PNG.)

As Jimi said, typically the use of having bigger/higher-res pictures is so that you can resize and crop them to fit the size you want. Smaller images tend to look poor/blurry/deformed when you try to scale them, so if you've got a little image you've nicked off a web page, you are pretty much stuck with that size.

[ss-kalm]

Originally Posted by BobInce

dpi settings are irrelevant on the web and will be ignored by web browsers, which will display your images at 1:1 pixels.....

What this means in terms of images is that if the image is 640 x 480 pixels, it will show as 6.666" x 5" on a windows machine and 8.888" x 6.666" on a Mac. If you want it to display smaller then you will have to physically reduce the size of the image. You cannot change the resolution .... (Ignoring the silly 120 dpi option of course) ....

As Bob said, the actual dpi of the image is irrelevant only it's physical size in pixels matters.

[sgiff]

Originally Posted by BobInce

dpi settings are irrelevant on the web and will be ignored by web browsers, which will display your images at 1:1 pixels. Xtreme may internally think that a pixel is 1/96 of an inch, but that information is meaningless when it comes to exporting a web page.

Exactly so don't think about dpi so much when you are dealing with web, as for the most part dpi is irrelevant. The only thing you need to know is that it is better to save your images out of Xara at default screen resolution which is 96 and then go and convert them to 72 dpi without actually resampling the image using a batch converter like thumbs plus. This way if you need to use those images in Flash they will import correctly. Actually Adobe Flash is the only web app I know of that pays attention to pixel dpi and will not display your images correctly if you are saving straight out of Xara at 96 dpi.

[Soquili]

Why convert to 72 dpi? The Mac hasn't used that resolution for ages.

[DocRock]

Taking into account the facts on dpi vs. pixel resolution for the web, why do my Xara images often seem to be less resolved (not as sharp) on a web page after I resize or crop them in Xara Picture Editor?