question about printing digital art...

[ratcreature]

I don't own a color printer myself, so usually I don't print any digital art, but just create it for viewing on screen, i.e. I usually scan the pencil sketch at 300dpi, color it in GIMP, and then when it's finished I merge the layers and resize it so that it's a convenient, smaller size for looking at it on the usual 72dpi screen, which has the advantage to make it look better and conceal errors.

But I suspect printing art at 300dpi would still look rather crappy, so I wanted to ask those of you who print their digital art (I'm mostly thinking of digital drawings, I'm not sure whether it is different for photos) which resolution gives a decent result. I'm not thinking of professional printing quality, like graphic designers for print media would need, because I don't own a high end computer and working with huge graphic files with multiple layers in a very high resolution is cumbersome with my hardware limitations, which is why I usually settle for 300dpi, but just a good, clean look if you printed the drawing at the size of the original pencils. Would 600dpi be enough if I wanted to print a drawing later on, or does the resolution need to be even higher? At which resolution do you print your art?

Comments

[teneagles.livejournal.com]

I'm a graphic artist, and I provide all my files at 300dpi, by default. Sometimes clients want 600 or more, but that's for prepress stuff -- it's all going to be reduced when it's sent to print. Anything over 300dpi is going to be imperceptible to the human eye. Most home printers can't even do 300dpi, anyway; for technical reasons, the typical '600dpi' inkjet is actually, effectively, a 150dpi printer.