Is ppi important for desktop wallpapers?

Is ppi important for desktop wallpapers?

A person wants to buy an image of mine as a wallpaper for his "high resolution" monitor. Is ppi important in this? Is 72ppi the same as 240ppi for this type of non-printing use?

See here:

http://www.photoshopes​sentials.com …-ppi-web-resolution-myth/

Modern monitor resolutions are typically about 100 ppi, but with higher resolution monitors (such as the 4k/5k monitors, not the 72 ppi of the "old days") you would adjust your image dimensions in pixels accordingly.

So, you can take that into consideration, and you can ignore the image ppi if you produce an image that fits the dimensions of the display in pixels, or if you wish you can use inches for the dimensions and use the monitor ppi for the "resolution".

I don't know the details as far as the system sizing images for a desktop background, but I'd imagine that if you follow the above approach things should be fine...

If you are exporting a pic from Lightroom for Screen for use as wallpaper, then you should specify the exact pixel dimensions corresponding to the user's monitor. You might have to go back to Develop to tailor the aspect ratio, or one of the dimensions might be short. ("Aspect ratio" means the ratio of the long side to the short side.) "Resolution" in the export dialog is irrelevant if you are outputting for screen. You will get exactly the same picture with 1 ppi as with 1000 ppi. Try it.

As Tony said most modern monitors operate at between about 96 PPI, the current "Microsoft desktop standard, for which on screen fonts are optimised, and about 110 PPI, which is about what you get on a 2560×1440 27" monitor. I'm not too sure what the 4K screens run at, but my 27" 5K screen is 219 PPI. Obviously you would need to crop the image to a 16:9 ratio, and then resize it to match the pixel dimensions. For this the actual PPI setting is immaterial, it won't be used. Where the screens physical resolution might matter is when you come to apply your output sharpening. I would imagine that for the much higher resolution 4/5K screens you might need to add a higher level of sharpening for optimal results, compared to what is normal for low resolution displays. Be aware if using LR that unlike for sharpen for paper options, which do adjust the amount of sharpening based on output resolution, the sharpen for screen options are the same regardless of resolution. Oh yes and don't forget that the monitor size in the specification is for the visible diagonal, not the width of the image.

Alan

Do the math for your monitor: I use a 22" diagonal monitor, so.

Long side #pixels = (diagonal^2 - short-side^2)^(1/2)
Short side #pixels = (diagonal^2 - long-side^2)^(1/2)

That will tell you how many pixels x pixels you need. Forget PPI. Resize to pixel dimension and your done.

Bassat wrote in post #18195573
Do the math for your monitor: I use a 22" diagonal monitor, so.

Long side #pixels = (diagonal^2 - short-side^2)^(1/2)
Short side #pixels = (diagonal^2 - long-side^2)^(1/2)

That will tell you how many pixels x pixels you need. Forget PPI. Resize to pixel dimension and your done.

You shouldn't try to calculate the pixel dimensions. They need to be exact. Ask the user what they are. In case of doubt, on a Windows system, you can usually right-click on a blank place on the desktop and select "Graphics Properties" or similar, and then click on the appropriate tab. The pixel dimensions (resolution) will be displayed.

Ha! Two clicks to get 1920x1080. That was easy.

Bassat wrote in post #18195676
Ha! Two clicks to get 1920x1080. That was easy.

Yeah, same as mine.

On my desktop I do Display Settings, then Advanced Display Settings to reveal the screen resolution.

Thank you all. Here's an additional quirk...

The photo is in portrait format. I have already told him that it will not cover the entire screen, but will have blank spaces on each side.

I suppose I could size for his vertical space, but I am thinking I should still size for his entire monitor and let him shrink-to-fit as necessary.

Thoughts?

photoguy6405 wrote in post #18195943
Thank you all. Here's an additional quirk...

The photo is in portrait format. I have already told him that it will not cover the entire screen, but will have blank spaces on each side.

I suppose I could size for his vertical space, but I am thinking I should still size for his entire monitor and let him shrink-to-fit as necessary.

Thoughts?

Most version of Windows allow different ways of rendering the Desktop BG: Full size (may or may not cover entire screen, but keeps aspect ratio), Tile (tiles multiple copies to fill desktop), Stretch (fills screen, but will distort aspect ration if nesssary).

photoguy6405 wrote in post #18195943
Thank you all. Here's an additional quirk...

The photo is in portrait format. I have already told him that it will not cover the entire screen, but will have blank spaces on each side.

I suppose I could size for his vertical space, but I am thinking I should still size for his entire monitor and let him shrink-to-fit as necessary.

Thoughts?

It really depends on if you are interested in ensuring that your work is presented on his screen to its optimum. Given a 16:9 ratio monitor a full height image is going to fit into the width of the screen 2 and 2/3 times (2.66667×) so you either go with that and he has the choice of (under Windows, not sure about Mac) centering it, tiling it, so that there are the aforementioned 2.6 copies of the image across the screen, or of course he selects fit to screen, and the image becomes over two and a half times wider than it should.

Your other option is to create a new 16:9 ratio document, in the correct pixel dimensions for his screen, and then paste in your image at the full height. You could then set this to be a nice complementary colour to those in your image, or you could set it to be transparent, and save the image as a PNG file. This will let him select his choice of background colour, while still having an image that will be displayed the same regardless of his choice of wallpaper setting.

What I would not do is make an image file that is 2.67× taller than it needs to be, so that it fits width ways across the monitor, that is going to produce an incredibly large file, one which he will be more than capable of printing very large in very good quality should he want to. Personally I would not be handing out image files that size for digital display use, Since I would be wanting to sell them actual prints, since there is lots of money to be made from prints. I normally limit posting images online to a maximum of 1280 px on the long edge, and for a digital file I would be inclined to limit the size to 1920 px.

Alan

98kellrs wrote in post #18195449
See here:

http://www.photoshopes​sentials.com …-ppi-web-resolution-myth/

Awesome article. Thank you.

I did some lengthy Google searches prior to asking here and I didn't come across that one.