Bah, DPI

I was printing one of my portraits the other day, it didn't need cropping or anything and when I went into CS5 to 'resize' the image it showed it as 770 ppi before resize.

Yet, another image , full sized, uncropped showed 240 ppi.

Now, what dpi / ppi does my camera (5D2) capture in?

I export from Raw in Lightroom, the Lightroom setting is 240 dpi. If my aim is to get high quality prints should I set this higher?

Ppi is irrelevant. It's the size (in pixels) that counts.

A jpg from your camera probably uses 72ppi. ACR defaults to 240 ppi and DPP to 350ppi.
Yet all those files are 5616 x 3744 pixels.

Around 3900 dpi. Roughly the same as the 20D/30D/XT, but of course the sensor is 2.56 times bigger.

Although 300 ppi is considered the highest quality, it really depends on the printer. 300 is optimum for Canon and HP inkjets but Epsons are happiest when fed 360 ppi. In commercial labs the ubiquitous Frontier machines are best with 250 ppi. In the Durst Lambda laserjets that I love anything from 200 to 400 ppi doesn't seem to make much difference. Ask your printer what he advises.

Cool thanks.

Say if I do decide to crop and image exported at 300dpi, would I need ensure the resize value is also set to that so that I don't end up with an image of say, 100dpi?

Sure. Ppi is pixels divided by inches. More pixels = higher ppi, less pixels (because of cropping) = lower ppi.

Thanks for all the help.

I had a Sikh wedding yesterday and the 5D2 pulled some amazing shots from 2000 taken.

Wanted to get my head sorted in that respect before I exported from Raw.

Much appreciated.

PPI is a setting that determines the quality of your print, and has no relevance to your images until you send them to a printer. Up to that point, the resolution of your images is determind by how many pixels wide by how many pixels high.

So after cropping I can change the ppi to 300ppi and it would make no difference as to how I exported them from Lightroom?

Gel wrote in post #10434702
So after cropping I can change the ppi to 300ppi and it would make no difference as to how I exported them from Lightroom?

If you just export it with a PPI designation but at its "native" pixel resolution the PPI figure will just be written into the Exif and have no effect on the image.

If, though, you set your image dimensions to inches and enter a PPI, you are instructing LR to resize the image to a specific resolution/size. Some people prefer to do this preparing for a print job, other people prefer to just leave the image at its full resolution and let the printer driver handle the needed up/down sampling. Of course, some commercial/stock agencies specify a PPI designation, such as 300 PPI, so you need to be aware of your requirements.