How to change ppi?

[Alanna]

I am an artist and have fallen in love with Pixelmator! I primarily work in oils and occasionally acrylics. I have an iPad Pro and iPencil that I use the Pixelmator app on, and have used it more and more. Now I don't know what I did without it! I am in the early stages of getting my work created on my iPad into prints. I was told my images need to be at least 300 ppi to make a decent print, but I couldn't find a ppi setting on my iPad program. I've played with the pixels on the image and basically ran the numbers up as high as they would go, am I in the right spot here? Help please!

Thanks!!
Alanna

[st3f]

Hi Alanna.

Your post made me realise that... I don't know where my iPad is. I'm packing to move house in a month so it'll be in a box somewhere. So I can't help you to find the setting. (edit: I just downloaded Pixelmator for iOS on my iPhone and I can't find a ppi setting either. Hopefully someone else can help with that.)

What I can help with is what you need for print. As prints get bigger the ppi (pixels per inch) used generally gets smaller. A print that you can hold in your hand will typically use 300ppi. A billboard much less. If you're printing really big there's a calculator here: https://www.pointsinfocus.com/tools/min ... alculator/

Let's assume you're not printing huge and that 300ppi is reasonable (or you're working with a client that insists on 300ppi). What matters is not the PPI setting in your app but the actual size of your image in pixels. So If you're going to make a 10" by 8" print at 300 ppi, you need a 3000px by 2400px image (10"×300ppi by 8"×300ppi). For other sizes scale appropriately.

Hope this helps.

- Stef.