How To Solve The Problem Of Lack Of Detail In Your Prints
It sounds like you may have resampled the photograph down to a small size rather than changed the display size. Here we are dealing with the thorny subject of resolution and print size - one of the most misunderstood concepts in digital photography.
When measuring the size of digital photographs, there really is only one sort of measurement that’s important, and that is the pixel dimensions. A digital photograph is a certain number of pixels wide and high. Many digital cameras produce pictures at 1,600 x 1,200 pixels. The size you display the image is up to you. If you’re making a digital print, then 200 pixels per inch will give you good results.
This resolution gives a print size of 8 x 6 inches. A problem lurks on screen when preparing the image for printing because most digital cameras produce images that have a default setting of 72 pixels per inch (ppi), which is the resolution of the average computer monitor.
At this resolution, our picture will fill the entire screen area of a large size 1,600 x 1,200 pixel monitor, which is approximately 22 x 16 inches - far too big to fit inside the dimensions of an 8 x 6 print.
We need to change the picture dimension settings and shrink the display size down from large screen size to small print size, and this is where many people go wrong - they reduce the display size but keep the resolution at 72ppi.
The computer, being the dumb machine that it is, will then resample the image from 1,600 x 1,200 pixels (5.5- megabytes) down to 576 x 432 (just under three quarters of a megabyte) throwing away over 85 per cent of the picture information
