Hi,

Please I want to know is microstock sites actually accept only 300 DPI or they can accept 72 DPI ?

Do you mean I can change the DPI from 72 To 300 on photoshop without loosing quality ??!

You're not changing the resolution.  You're changing how those pixels are interpreted.  

I can no understand how 300 DPI = 72 DPI !!!! I am a graphic designer and I know the difference between them..  When printing something it has to be 300 DPI but If you make something for website design or for screen in generally you can use 72 dpi...

I thin we are buying our photos to clients will use them for priniting usually!! I am confused !

Quote from: satforce on March 25, 2009, 14:59

I thin we are buying our photos to clients will use them for priniting usually!! I am confused !

DPI is an instruction for the printer. Read this article carefully.

The issue is important in deciding/calculating what resolution you need to buy at a site (S,M,L,XL) to print a given shot at a particular physical space (like 2x2 inches on paper).

Thank you..

 DPI or Dots Per Inch reflect directly with the end users needs. As earlier stated the web needs much less information for an image than a print so it runs at 72 DPI. The print however needs a higher resolution depending on the publication material and printing style. Example, Newspapers need less than Vanity Fair magazine because of the paper and detail required.
 You can change your DPI in PS if you like but you are as earlier stated just interpolating or letting the computer guess at what extra pixels to add by analyzing the already existing pixels if you want the image to remain the same size.
 There are limits. You cannot take a photo at 72 DPI measuring 7 x 7 inches and interpolate that file to a 300 DPI file at those same 7 x 7 dimensions. If you want to make a bill board from a 72 DPI 5 x 5 inch file you would not be able to take it nearly that far. However if you have a 50 mg. file at 300 DPI then you have enough information for softwares like Genuine Fractals to interpolate that image to almost any reasonable size needed without great loss of information. That being the reason that Macro and Micro sites don't usually offer larger than a 50 mg. file at 300 DPI. They are sufficient for just about any application.
 Which brings me to another I think very important point about the changes in our culture on how we gather information and the price points that are in position at both Macro and Micro levels. Why should a web site that gets as many hits as it's publication version, lets say PDN magazine and PDN website just for example. Why are they offered by the agencies to pay so much less per photo for their web site version than their press version.
 When the internet started and Macro RF was first in place agencies set these smaller prices for small web files because it was extra income but it was in know way a threat to the publicized world that made up the agencies and photographers bread and butter. Now the web quite often gets far more hits than the publication version but still pays much less per image. I think it is time to evaluate the price structure for small web size images to reflect the change in advertising. I'm not talking about making their cost equal to a 50 mg. file not even close. Just consider adjusting for the change in times.
 

 Exactly, and the web buyer gets to pay the least even though they are the budding enterprise for advertising revenue. Raise the price on small files, the buyer is making more for less. That is not my favorite choice as a image provider.

I did not get a satisfactory answer from Panasonic but believe this thread is encourging me to submit my 72dpi images as stock?  Is that correct?

Yes. I had the same problem with my 10MP Sony which outputted only 72dpi. Till I discovered that DPI doesn't really matter, it's resolution. DPI is just a number. It's very easy to change in Irfanview in batch: select all your thumbs in a folder, go to menu File > JPG Losless Operations >Lossless rotations with selected files... and then this:



It's lossless: no generation degradation like when you open a JPG and save it again. The image itself and the resolution isn't touched. Most sites do that themselves anyways. You can even upload at 1DPI and they poke in the 300.

All together now... 'DPI doesn't matter.  DPI doesn't matter.  For submissions, only pixel dimensions matter.'

Say it five times.