Print resolution in CS3

[canon shooter]

I was reading George Lepp's article in the October Outdoor Photographer and something caugth my eye.

He says he sends his file to the printer with 300 dpi. I checked my setting in CS3 and mine seems to be set at 240. Should I change mine? Will it improve the final print? I noticed it took my 20D images from around 43MB (PSD) to over 73MB.

What am I missing...probably a lot as I have not been resizing to the print size, I have just been picking the print size in the print dialog in CS3. Am I cheating myself on print quality?

[tim]

It depends on the lab. Both the pro labs I use specify that images must be at 250ppi, RGB, and sized correctly. ie I MUST set the image to 250ppi, and 6" by 4" if I want a 6x4" print. If I make it 300ppi but say 6" I don't know if they'd downsample or if they'd print it larger - i've always done it right - they might just call me.

For consumer labs and some pro labs you just send them the file and say how big to make it. ie I can send a 3000px file at 300dpi and say "print me a 6x4", and they do.

So, overall, the answer is "it depends". My enlargement FAQ (link in my sig) might tell you more... or it might not.