By Scott Ellis, loosely edited by Cedric Weatherly 

First, why as a Realtor® should you care about understanding image DPI & Resolution? 

In short, if you are going to print something (particularly of quality) and are every tasked with optimizing images for the web it’s important to know just a few basics about how images work on the web. More importantly, if you are ever going to hire someone to develop collateral (a brochure, flyer, etc) for you, they’ll likely have requirements you won’t necessarily understand and not everyone is good at explaining them. So what follows is a very simple explanation of what you need to know to make the whole process a little easier, for you and your marketing team.

First of all, it begins with a good picture, no matter what the source. 

iStockPhoto.com  is a very popular website for stock images. They supply high resolution images for marketing pieces. If taking your own images, please keep and save the original shots in a separate folder or location outside of any tweaked/cropped/resized images.

A few definitions to start with:

DPI: Dot’s per inch.
The number of dots or pixels in a single inch. The more dot’s the higher the quality of the picture (more resolution, more sharpness and detail,… )

Resolution: The easiest way I can explain resolution is to say that more resolution means an image displays more detail (or is capable of displaying more detail). Higher DPI means higher resolution.

Print:
300dpi is standard, sometimes 150 is acceptable but never lower.

Web:
72dpi, always.

Ok, so how do you apply this new found insight?

If you are sending someone images to use for print (again, that brochure you are having made) and they tell you the images are “too small” odds are the resolution wasn’t high enough. The image might look great and huge on your computer monitor or tablet, but is actually really small when printed out.

To add to the confusion, your monitor resolution will also determine how big the picture appears to you when viewing it on your computer. The same sized monitor set to 800×600 while show an 800 wide by 600 tall image as a full screen image. On a monitor that is 1600×1200 the image will only take up 1/4 the screen.You might have thought it would take up half but it’s actually going to be 1/2 as wide and 1/2 as tall (so 1/2 times 1/2 = 1/4). Long story short, the image will look much smaller on that screen but the image itself is still the same size. Since print displays at 300dpi the image looks still that much smaller.

Sidenote: Taking a lower Resolution Image into a graphics program like Photoshop and increasing the resolution does not result in a better/sharper image. You may increase the size or resolution, but you will result in a blurry image. Its easier to Size DOWN, than to Size UP when modifying an image. Pixels do not stretch, but you will not lose quality making something smaller.

Here are a couple of quick examples to show you the difference, no matter what your monitor resolution, it’s all relative!

The first example below has a lot of detail and is at 300dpi (even though the web is 72dpi this works for example purposes). The second example is at 72dpi but scaled up to the same size so you can see the difference in detail. The actual image would be about 1/4 the size when you go from 300dpi to 72dpi, but at the same height and width is where you can actually see the difference.

Hopefully this has helped you get a little clearer on the differences between DPI, resolution and why if you have someone do something for you in print there will be different requirements than for the web. It’s also why that digital camera with higher megapixels takes better pictures than one with lower, it gives you more resolution to capture more detail.
 

Advice for Realtors

Please try to keep all of your original photos when taking pictures of properties. Using images from the MLS does not work well for print collateral such as Listing Flyers, Brochures, and Postcards. Please avoid using MLS images for any print materials as it may result in undesirable blurring and distortions to your images. This could make your marketing materials look very unprofessional.

The MLS scales down your images to 800x600 at 72dpi, no matter how big your image is before uploading them. Therefore, it is better to use your original images saved on your computer, than those stored on the MLS for anything print related.

Utilize your marketing department when handling original images. Usually they will know the best methods to take when making any modifications.

Sidenote: image files with higher resolution (dpi) will also have a bigger file size because they contain more data. Start with the biggest images you can but when putting images on the web they should be set to 72dpi, it’ll save you a ton of bandwidth and they’ll load faster. Yes they’ll be smaller than the original but should in most cases be plenty big because of monitor resolution (ppi) sizes.

In Summary

• PRINT IMAGES should be 300 DPI
• WEB IMAGES should be 72 DPI
• You cannot increase quality by modifying the resolution of an image
• You will not decrease quality when sizing down an image
• Enlarging an image beyond its original size and resolution will result in blurring of the image
• ALWAYS keep your original images, at their original size/resolution
• Try not to utilize images stored in the MLS for print collateral
• When resizing image, especial sizing down, save that images as a new file or in a new folder to avoid overwriting your original image, you never know if you will need it again.