Printers say they'll print at 300dpi - will it change anything?

I'm asking this for a friend who is wanting to put some pics of her dogs in their breed annual mag. she has a p&s camera, but is confused that the printers say the pics will be printed at a resolution of 300dpi, will this make the pics better or worse or is this just normal

She's already going to use one of the pics of her dog doing agility that I took back in the summer, but her others will be with her little camera.

Also the pics will be printed in b&w.

Thanks

Christine

Christine 300 dpi is industry-wide standard for magazine quality printing. The lowest I believe they accept submissions at is 240 dpi irrespective of colour.

Christine there is a thread somewhere about printing quality, I shall see if I can find it and pop it in the thread.
Congratulations, about you friend using one of you agility pics too.

If you look at the pixel size of each image (i.e. 3200 x 2000) and dived each side by 300, this will give you the maximum linear size that the magazine can print the images.

So in the case above 3200 divided by 300 = 10.6 and 2000 divided by 300 = 6.6 so the maximum printable size would be 10.6 inch x 6.6 inch

This will not make the image look worse or better. If you were to print the image at twice the linear size 21.2" x 13.2", then the image would look far worse. Printing smaller than 10.6 x 6.6 would not effect the quality.

Steve

i have mentioned this before but I do think worth saying again. Do make sure your printer is printing the same as the camera, ie SRGB or Adobe, some printers have other output settings, I found my HP photosmart was set to an HP output setting not SRGB and the difference was quite a bit.

Quick check guide -computer -start- settings-printer or fax-right click on printer showing- properties- colour management. On the drop down list will show what the printer setting is except for Canon printers which I believe have their own codes.

Hope this walk through may be of some help

bazza