There is much confusion out there about the acronyms DPI and PPI. This confusion is understandable, given that people often use the terms in error interchangeably. So what do DPI and PPI mean, and how do they apply to printed photographs and digital image files? In this article, we will answer these questions and clear up any misconceptions you may have about the abbreviations.
Let’s start with some definitions.
Table of Contents
What is DPI?
DPI stands for dots per inch and refers to the resolution of a printer. It describes the density of ink dots placed on a sheet of paper (or another photographic medium) by a printer to create a physical print. DPI has nothing to do with anything displayed digitally! And this is where a lot of the confusion occurs. More on DPI in a bit.
What is PPI?
PPI stands for pixels per inch. PPI describes the resolution of a digital image, not a print. PPI is used to resize images in preparation for printing. To understand this, we also need to understand what a pixel is.
A pixel, or picture element, is the smallest building block used to create an image on a screen. Pixels are square and arranged on a grid. Each square is a different colour or hue. Because pixels are so small, our eyes can not detect the elements on the grid as individual squares. Instead, our brain blends each pixel into a smooth digital picture. Now before those of you with more advanced knowledge call me out and say this is not entirely true, you are correct. Pixels themselves are made up of red, green and blue sub-pixels. These sub-pixels are blended to give each pixel its hue. However, a full explanation of sub-pixels is far more detail than we need to get into for this discussion.
In this image of a hooded warbler, I have zoomed into the small portion of the bug in the warbler’s mouth to 1,600% using Photoshop. At this magnification, you can see the individual pixel elements that make up the image. This enlargement is pixel peeping on steroids! Just a reminder to click on the image below so you can see the details.
Digital Image Size
It is also essential that we understand what digital image size means before we get too deep into our discussion of DPI vs. PPI. The size of a digital photo is created in your camera. It depends on the model of camera you are using and how you have set up your camera. For example, my Fujifilm X-T2 captures a raw file that is 6,000 pixels wide by 4,000 pixels high. If I have my camera set to shoot JPEG, I have three different image size choices: large (L) is 6,000 × 4,000 pixels, medium (M) is 4,240 × 2,832 pixels, and small (S) is 3,008 × 2,000 pixels.
As an aside, if you do the math, 6,000 × 4,000 = 24,000,000 pixels, or 24 MP (million pixels or megapixels). When you hear someone say that they have a 24 MP camera, this is what they are referring to. Again, for all you sticklers out there, I know that my camera has a 24.3 MP sensor, but I’m not going to talk about actual and effective pixels in this article!
For more information about camera resolution, check out Nasim’s article, “Camera Resolution Explained.”
PPI and Screen Resolution
Now down to the nitty-gritty. PPI is also used to describe screen resolution (not to be confused with digital image resolution). The resolution for any particular screen is a fixed quantity. Screen resolutions vary between devices and are continually getting better. The pixel count of my 15″ MacBook Pro Retina screen is 2,880 × 1,800 pixels, and its resolution is 221 PPI. An iPhone X has a pixel count of 1,125 × 2,436 and a resolution of 463 PPI. Displays with higher resolutions have device pixels that are smaller and more closely packed together. Images on higher resolution screens appear sharper and crisper than those same images displayed on lower resolution devices. However, this is only true to a point. How far away from the device you view the image and how good your eyes are also affect how sharp a digital image looks on a screen.
Since the pixel count is fixed for any device, image resolution will not impact how a photo looks on that device. You can export an image at 72 PPI, 96 PPI, or even 5,000 PPI, but for a given device, you will not see any difference in how the picture looks. It is the picture size – the physical number of pixels along the length and width – that changes how the image looks on a particular display screen, not the image resolution.
Here are two versions of the same photograph. I exported them from Lightroom at two different image resolutions. The first photo of the purple gallinule has a resolution of only 1 PPI. The second one was exported at 5,000 PPI. They both have dimensions of 2,048 x 1,365 pixels (again, click on the image to see them at full resolution). I guarantee you will not see any difference in them at all. If you still don’t believe me, drag the images into Photoshop and use the Image Size dialogue box to check their resolution yourself!
X-T2 + XF100-400mmF4.5-5.6 R LM OIS WR @ 400mm, ISO 400, 1/1600, f/5.6
X-T2 + XF100-400mmF4.5-5.6 R LM OIS WR @ 400mm, ISO 400, 1/1600, f/5.6
PPI and Print Size
This is where most of the confusion exists because PPI and DPI are often used interchangeably to mean the same thing, which is wrong! DPI does not apply to digital images! As I said earlier, DPI is a physical property of a printer, not the digital image.
When talking about print size, PPI refers to the number of image pixels from the digital file that will be used to create one inch on the printed medium. The math is quite simple to determine the size of the print that can be made from a digital file. Take the pixel dimensions of your image and divide those values by the resolution (PPI value). For example, if I print one of the 6,000 × 4,000 pixel image files from my X-T2 at 200 PPI, the photograph would be 6,000/200 = 30″ long and 4,000/200 = 20″ high.
Pixels do not exist on paper. But to simplify the explanation of PPI and print size, I want you to imagine that each image pixel from the digital file is to be represented by a small square on the photo paper. Let’s call each of these printed squares a “paper pixel.” Each “paper pixel” will have the same colour tone as its corresponding pixel in the digital file. Now let’s take a look at the Image Size dialogue box in Photoshop. You will find it under the Image Menu. First, make sure the Resample Box is unchecked. Notice what happens when we change the resolution. The pixel dimensions of the image are not altered (they remain 6,000 × 4,000). You might also notice that the size of the file remains constant, too (137.3 Megabits). However, the width and height of the image change based on the calculation above. These screen clips illustrate this. At 1000 PPI the printed picture is only 6″ × 4″. At 20 PPI, the print is 300″ × 200″! And at 200 PPI, the image will be printed 30″ × 20″. What this means is simply that those “paper pixels” are much bigger for larger prints than for smaller ones. If you look at the 300″ long print and the 30″ long print from a foot away, you will not notice the individual “paper pixels” in the smaller photograph, but you will see each square on the large print.
Here is an analogy for you. Imagine the total number of pixels in your digital image as a can of icing. There is a fixed quantity of frosting in the container, and you don’t have the ingredients to make more! You could either thinly ice a large rectangular cake with the available icing. Or, you could pile all the frosting thickly on a small, single cupcake. The bigger you make the cake, the less densely it is iced (smaller PPI value = big, low-resolution print). Or conversely, the cupcake has a very dense layer of icing (large PPI value = small, high-resolution print). Apologies for the sketch – there is a reason I use a camera and not a paintbrush!
How Big a Print Can I Make?
One of the most common questions I get asked is “How big can I print this image?” I am going to give you a short and long version of the answer!
The short answer goes like this. Many print labs suggest that you deliver your digital files at a resolution of 300 PPI (although some will mistakenly ask for a resolution of 300 DPI). So, divide your digital image dimensions by 300 to determine the biggest print possible from your file. Continuing the X-T2 example, those files can be printed 6,000/300 = 20″ long by 4,000/300 = 13.33″ high.
So now the long answer to “How big can I print this image?” It depends! There is nothing wrong with printing a large print at a lower resolution. You can print at a lower resolution because you do not look at large prints from up close. The 300″x 200″ image we discussed above is billboard size, and the “paper pixels” are approximately 1.3 mm wide. When was the last time you looked at a billboard from a foot away? That is the printed equivalent of pixel peeping! If you view this image from across the street, you will not notice the jagged composition of the larger individual “print pixels.” The image edges will look sharp, and the color tones will have smooth transitions. Even large prints (16″ × 20″, 24″ × 36″) that you hang on the wall are viewed from several feet away (at least they should be), so using a resolution of 200 or 240 PPI is often perfectly acceptable and will produce high-quality prints.
The print medium also plays a role. If you are printing a photograph with lots of fine detail on a glossy surface, you may want to use a higher resolution. A higher resolution will ensure that all the fine detail is rendered crisp and sharp. On the other hand, printing an image on canvas does not require as high a resolution because detail gets lost in the texture of the canvas.
Regardless of which output resolution you use, to ensure that you can print as large as possible, make sure your camera set to the largest file size available. Remember I said above that if I have my camera set to JPEG, I have the choice of three image sizes. If I accidentally set my camera to small (S), then the biggest photo I could print would be 10″ by 6.67″ at 300 PPI.
Resampling
What if you don’t have enough pixels in your image to make a large print? If your image’s pixel dimensions are too small, you can resample the image. Resampling adds pixels to an image file. However, I would not recommend you do this! Resampling degrades image quality, sometimes drastically! If you need to make the pixel count of your file larger, use specialized software, such as On1 Resize. When pixels are added to your file, the resampling software “guesses” what the pixels it is adding should look like based on existing neighboring pixels. In simple terms, the original pixels are spread apart and new pixels are placed in between them to fill the gaps.
Take a look at the graphic below. The first photo (top left) is my original 6,000×4,000-pixel file. At 300 PPI it can be printed 20″ wide. The second image is a 1,200×800 crop of the chickadee’s eye and also has a resolution of 300 PPI. The image quality on both of these is excellent. However, I could not print the crop any bigger than 4″ wide given its small dimensions. If I want a 20″ print, I have to upsize the image by resampling.
Notice what happens to the crop’s pixel dimensions when I check the Resample box and type in 6,000 for my new width (bottom image). The physical size of the file, both its dimensions and amount of memory required to store it have increased. However, notice how soft the details are in the feathers and around the eye. Photoshop is doing its best to add the appropriate pixels to make the new larger image file. These new pixels didn’t exist in the original. Although I can print this new file 20″ wide, the print would not be nearly as sharp as the original.
You can also decrease the pixel dimensions of a digital file by resampling. Downsizing is done to minimize the file size for web images and for emailing pictures to friends. In fact, if you haven’t clicked on any of the images in this article, you are actually seeing a downsized file which is 960 pixels wide. The software behind the website downsizes the images so that the article will load faster. Downsizing can also degrade an image, since you are getting rid of pixels from the original file. That is why the images embedded in the article do not appear as crisp and sharp as the higher resolution file you see if you click on the image. In fact, my original 6,000 × 4,000 pixel images are all downsized to files 2,048 pixels wide before I upload them to the website. This is a compromise between image quality and file size. And it allows viewers on different screens to see the entire picture without having to scroll. These files take up much less room on the server than the original image files would!
DPI Explained
Last but not least, DPI refers to dots per inch. But these dots are little tiny dots of ink, not square picture elements. Printers create a print by spraying miniature droplets of ink on the paper. It takes many dots to form one pixel of the image.
I’m not going to get into any details about printing. Topics such as how the dots are made, the patterns they are arranged in on the paper, or how different colours and shades are created are things that are not important to the average person who wants a physical print of their photograph. The layout of the ink droplets is all taken care of by the internal software on your printer.
It is enough to say that most printers have several print settings that control the density of the ink they apply to the paper. However, for most home printers, you do not set the value of the printer’s resolution. Instead, you select it from settings like draft, normal, best or photo. Each setting puts progressively more ink on the page because more small dots of ink are sprayed closer together. Inkjet printers often have resolutions between 300 and 720 DPI. Some laser printers and photo printers have resolutions exceeding 2,400 DPI. I want to stress that DPI is a function of the printer. It is not a setting that you choose in your photo editing software. The image size in combination with the DPI of the printer determines how many dots of ink are used to represent a single digital pixel on the paper.
Summary
A pixel is the smallest building block in a digital image. Pixels are square and laid out on a rectangular grid.
Pixel count, or image dimension, is the numbers of pixels across the length and width of a digital image.
PPI is a term that describes the resolution of a digital image and determines its size when printed. To adjust the print dimensions for a digital image, modify its PPI (without resampling). Doing this does not affect the pixel count of the image. And remember, the PPI of an image does not influence how it will display on a device screen.
DPI is a function of a printer. It describes how tightly little dots of ink sprayed on the paper are placed to create a photograph. DPI is not used (at least it shouldn’t be used) to describe any aspect of a digital file.
Hopefully, this helps to clear up some of the confusion between DPI and PPI. The next time someone asks you to send them a 300 DPI file for printing, feel free to correct them! Or if someone tells you that 96 PPI is best for posting images on Facebook, you can inform them that PPI has nothing to do with photos viewed on a screen!
If you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment below, and thanks for reading.
his is so detailed that I had easy time understanding.
Great article it helped a lot!
One thing I don’t understand is, when I did what you suggested which is downloading the gallinule images and see them in Photoshop, they have the same ppi. Why is that?
Thanks! Keep writing!
Great article….Thanks! I have been wracking my brain trying get this PPI, image sizing thing figured out. Although I will still have to work it out more in my head, your article has solidified what I have read from the other writers of PL, but somehow easier to comprehend. Maybe the cupcake analogy…I don’t know! Takeaways;
if exporting to a media source, facebook or whatever, PPI in inconsequential. If exporting for print, in my case I will set PPI to 300 as I have a 24MP camera and shoot RAW…defaults to largest size available.
PS born and raised in Vancouver, now in the Okanagan…
Thank you, Tim. And great to “meet” a fellow Vancouverite!
So what is the difference between raster and vector images, and how does that affect how much I can enlarge an image? JPEG, EPS, TIFF, PNG, SVP? (I don’t even know what the acronyms stand for; I believe that JPEG and PNG are raster, EPS and SVP vector, not sure about TIFF—vector?)
Help!
beautifully explained. I was just confused by ppi and dpi, in spite of having a science background. Congratulations
The worst article I’ve read yet on PhotographyLife.
You’ve taken a simple subject and spent several long-winded pages making it look difficult – I can’t help but wonder if you actually understand it yourself.
Contact me if you want to know how to write this up properly – because, frankly, this sucks.
Hello Elizabeth,
Fantastic article indeed, explaining a lot of things. Thank you for that.
I have just one more “practical” question:
How should we understand the _relationship_ between the PPI that we set for the image file, and the DPI property of the printer?
What are the implications?
Let’s assume I have a printer that is capable of printing at 600 DPI. -> Which PPI should I set (for best results) when exporting my images for printing?
Should I set the PPI ideally at the same value as my printer can print DPI (ie. set PPI=600)? — (I.e. as far as I understood your article, each image pixel would be then printed out as one “printer dot”, right?)
Or should I (for better printing results) set the PPI _lower_ than the DPI of the printer? For example PPI being 1/2 of my printer’s DPI: like set the PPI to 300, which – in my understanding – would have the effect that each image pixel would be printed (“constructed”) by four “printer dots” ? [two in upper row, and two in lower row — I guess all 4 in the same ink color??] — I mean in this case the printer can do _more_ dots per inch than the image file delivers as pixels per inch, right?
Or should I even (for better print results) set the PPI higher than the DPI of the printer? For example set the PPI as a double of the printer’s DPI (1200?). — Lets say I have a high-end camera capturing images at tons of megapixels, (so I could squeeze really lots of pixels into 1 inch, and still have a sufficient paper print dimensions)
and I really do set the PPI to a high value during the export (like 1200)… what happens in the printer then??: Will it use 4 neighbour pixel color values to average 1 “printing dot” color ?? Will it give a better, or a worse print result at the end ?
Would be great if you could answer the above questions!
–Martin
PS. I think I understand, that for a given fixed printer’s DPI – when I change the PPI in image export, then it will immediately impact the actual dimensions of the printed image on paper (in inches). But let’s put this aside for a moment.
(I might resample the image to a different pixel size in computer before printing, to achieve a _particular_ dimensions on paper)
I only want to understand which PPI is better for a given printer DPI? Equal,smaller,or higher?
Hi Martin, thanks for your question. The DPI on your printer is completely separate from the PPI you set on export from LR or Photoshop (or whatever post-processing software you are using). The DPI on your printer is usually much higher and represents how many micoscopic dots of ink are sprayed onto the printing medium to create the image. PPI is used to tell the printer how large to make the image. For example, if you have an image that is 6000×4000 pixels and you export it at 200 PPI, then it will be printed 30″ x 20″, regardless of the DPI on your printer. Check out Betty’s response 22.2, she gives a good explanation of printer DPI and how it affects image quality. I hope that helps!
An outstanding article, the best I have read on the subject(s)
Thanks so much, Ian! I appreciate your feedback
I second that !
Mark, I found your first few paragraphs to be a little rude. You should not mistake a request for a practical application in layman’s terms of what you wrote earlier for stupidity, unintelligence or lack of sophistication. I thought that I had mentioned that I don’t print much; having little need to print I have not studied the topic very much. My reasons for buying high end cameras are probably the same as yours or anybody else’sm and for me they are the right choice. However, you did provide some practical information in two of your paragraphs, for which I thank you. But allow me to say, that pissing matches between experts are rather unseemly and quite tiresome, and usually ruin the commentary for the essayist and other readers, although they do provide a certain amount of amusement to some of us. I wanted to remind you all in my post that apart from proving to one another how brilliant you all are, you did not do very much to further people’s understanding of the subject matter. Regarding my printer, I was well aware that it was not a high end printer when I bought it, but did think it might satisfy my needs for what little printing that I do. I was extremely disappointed in both the manual and printing software that came with it. These days companies that make such articles all seem to think that dumbing down their literature in favor of optimizing photo sharing and other social media activities are what people want. They are wrong, but it is fighting the tide to tell them so. Anyway, please consider from now on how you talk to people. It matters.
Elaine, with respect, you’re missing a very key element, and major weakness of a forum. I alone know with what tone I type or intend to be heard. And, you alone, may or may not be aware of what filters you read through.
The truth isn’t always pretty. Nothing I typed was done so out of rudeness, nor a sense of superiority. And, I realize there are a host of reasons people buy high end cameras. I’m fortunate to own several – each has strengths and weaknesses. I shoot with the D850 the least. I wrote out of many years of working with people wanting to use technology they didn’t understand, and some parts of it can’t be sugar coated. Rarely is any one served well by doing so.
The D850 is a very specialized camera and few that I have talked to shooting any of that series got it because they need it – more because of marketing speak or something they read in a review. That is unfortunate, because for most people, investing in a D850 is like buying a high end sports car to get groceries once a week and you live three miles from the store. The tool isn’t suited to the need. At the end of the day, each chooses what they think will serve their interests (or impress their friends) and I’m certainly not in a place to evaluate that for a stranger. However if I had a dollar for every conversation I’ve had with people shooting that line of cameras and fighting for decent results on many fronts – I would be a richer man. High pixel cameras are challenging to use well.
Second general assumption – that I know is unfortunately false. If you think you need a camera like the D850, then it presumes you understand its strengths well enough to work with them and make the most of them. I have yet to meet a person who got this kind of camera for quick social media snaps – it’s FOR printing. I’ve talked with a number of professionals over the years that choose NOT to get, or use this kind of camera as their main camera because it is so hard to shoot with AND because few need the volume of pixels this camera captures. That’s practical reality.
You can take issue with my comments, or those of others, and think less of them. In truth, some fairly bright people invested their own time to help bring clarity to issues people have wrangled with for years. Ultimately, managing pixels is pretty straightforward, color is a lot tougher. If people were half as bright as they talk, then they would have a lot less trouble with manuals. The challenge is people want options without investing the time to understand the pros and cons of those options. I have no doubt that you could probably get the kind of results you want with your camera and printer. In my experience, I typically had to document a very specific recipe of settings for each printing scenario, typically with many screen captures of the relevant windows. Most people don’t understand the whys and wherefores of all the variables and rarely want to invest the time, ink and paper to get that understanding. That’s the world we live in. So, for most, it is simpler and cheaper and they will get more predictable and better results by leaning on local retailers, or online sources. Document your options and stick with the same formula and generally you will get predictable results.
Again, I’m sorry if you were offended. I won’t take the time to try to help again. At the end of the day, the same dynamic applies to all of us: To the degree I am willing to recognize my ignorance in an area AND invest the time I need to understand what I need to know to get the results I’m after determines how well I’ll accomplish my intended goals. Blaming others or poor manuals won’t get the job done. Honestly, the best are investing the time to get beyond manuals, because a manual is just the starting place. It’s the persons experience and creativity that makes the most of the tools we have. That said, with such a technology driven world, it is valuable to understand the technical side of the parts of it we wish to use.
I almost always consider how I talk with people. A forum cuts out 80-90% of what is key in human communication, so I’d suggest aiming to read with a bit more generosity. Don’t assume the worst about others you don’t know, especially in a public forum.
Seriously?
” You have invested in a category of camera that few need and even fewer shoot well.”
“So you chose to invest in a high end camera (why, I have no idea) and are aiming to show off it’s captures on a relatively inexpensive printer.”
“You found the manual to be “not much use.” The challenge may be with the manual, or it may be with you. May be the info is clear, but you don’t (currently) have the knowledge to understand what it’s aiming to communicate.”
“If you think you need a camera like the D850, then it presumes you understand its strengths well enough to work with them and make the most of them. I have yet to meet a person who got this kind of camera for quick social media snaps”
And you did not think you were talking down to me? Well Mark, meet condescension. Both of your posts were so full of it (condescension) that I would have had to quote them in their entirety to give all the examples of it. You might have simply told me that my instinct to resize in order to get rid of a large quantities of pixels which my printer could not handle was a good one, and then possibly provided an example of how to do so. You could have left out the commentary on the D850 being too much camera for me, and the manual being too hard for me to understand, plus the social media remark (I don’t do social media), and your answer would have been much better received by me, and also have better addressed the question as originally asked. I still do sincerely thank you for the information you really gave. I think it will be a help to me when I have occasion to print again.
This has been a massive and incredibly technical discussion. Now I would like to bring it down to some practical layman’s terms. My printing history has been marginal and unsatisfactory from around the time I started using the D810 and now the D850 on a Canon Pixma MG7120 printer. So, my friends, My D850 produces a [converted from NEF file] jpeg of 8256×5504 pixels, and my D810 produces a [converted from NEF file] jpeg of 7360×4912 pixels. What must I do and what do I tell my printer to do to produce a good quality 8 1/2×11 print? I’d love to be able to say that I have a better printer that uses bigger paper, but I don’t. Do I change my jpegs down to 1280×1024 size to accomodate the paper size before sending them to the printer, or do I leave them at native size? I think my printer has fairly crappy software which doesn’t allow much input into what to tell the printer to do, but says things like ‘choose best quality’. I don’t use Lightroom or Photoshop, so if anybody answers, please phrase your answer in general terms free of any particular photo program’s language. Btw, if anyone knows of good printing software for Windows that can be used with a home printer, please feel free to mention it.
Have you looked at the manual?
Naturally I have. It is of not much use.
With respect, as a person who made a good living providing tech support and training for a couple of decades, I can assure you that most people do not look at the manual. And, those that do, rarely invest the time to understand the info provided. That said, it has also been my experience that not all manuals are created equal. In general, the less expensive the device, the more cryptic can be the manual.
From my perspective you have the perfect storm. You have invested in a category of camera that few need and even fewer shoot well. And you have a relatively inexpensive printer to reproduce images from. I had the D800, the D810, and now the D850. This line of cameras is capable of capturing detail and range of color that can’t be reproduced on an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of media, and this is especially true of the D850. So you chose to invest in a high end camera (why, I have no idea) and are aiming to show off it’s captures on a relatively inexpensive printer. There is no problem, accept that you need to invest the time to understand what you are getting from your camera and how to properly translate that for the printer you have.
You found the manual to be “not much use.” The challenge may be with the manual, or it may be with you. May be the info is clear, but you don’t (currently) have the knowledge to understand what it’s aiming to communicate. In my experience, for most people in your shoes, I would have recommended NOT owning a printer at all, at least, not for prints from my camera. And, in most instances I wasn’t called in at that point – but after. At this point in time, most people are best served by taking their images to Costco, Walmart, or other local retailers providing print services, or tapping into a number of them available online. The level of service and straightforward direction on how to provide *what they need* to give you the end result you desire really varies, but most will understand that the customer does not really understand issues of pixel, nor color, management, but will aim to state things as simply as possible and assume that if you don’t really get this stuff, then you will also allow more latitude in the final result.
The simplest understanding, from a pixel perspective, is you need to know what the printer needs to produce a good print. In very general terms that means 200-400 PPI for your final output size. So, for the sake of a simplified example, lets say you need 300 PPI for a 8 1/2 x 11 print. That means you need 300 x 8 1/2 by 300 x 11, or 2550 x 3000 pixels to send to the printer. Less than that may lead to softness in image detail. More than that can lead to loss of detail in the capture, since the image will have to be downsized, to eliminate the excessive pixels.
Your D850 is producing an image, based on your post, that is 5504 x 8256 pixels. Right up front we have two issues. The proportion of your capture (2:3) does not match the proportion of your paper (8 1/2:11), so either some of the paper will be blank, or some of the image will be cut off. The third possibility is that the image is stretched to fill the space, leading to distortion of the original capture. What happens depends on the software and user choices. The second issue is you have over four times more pixels than you need, so if you print a whole image, with no downsizing for correct number of pixels, then depending on the level of detail in that capture, the print may not accurately reflect the capture. So, strictly from a pixel perspective, if you want an image optimized for good results from your printer, you need to crop it to be the correct proportion AND you need to resize the image so it has the pixel dimensions you need at the PPI you need. What you need should come from the manual, as this often varies based on the kind of output you are doing (generally there are two or three levels of print quality, in terms of output resolution). Also, the type of media you use has an impact on the quality of the detail. Think about it like this, if I were to squeeze a drop of food color onto a paper towel, or piece of white plexiglass, the same volume of ink will spread a lot on the paper towel compared to the plexiglass. The same is happening with different kinds of media. Sending too much info for a media type can lead to poor results.
I wish it were simpler, but there are a lot of variables at play. It would be ideal if all manuals were written in the same simple terms, so it was always clear. The reality is that we live in a world with tons of options, one camera may capture an image that is a few megapixels and another many times that. Both images can look great on a small screen. But getting both to look great reproduced on paper – now that can be a challenge. The variety of printer options within a brand, and across the brands can be overwhelming. With choice comes responsibility to understand the pros and cons of the impact of the options we can celebrate, or curse, as they get in our way.
Good Luck.