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Image resolution for print boils down to one question: does your picture have enough pixels for the size it will be printed? Small things read at arm’s length, like stickers, labels, business cards and flyers, want about 300 pixels per inch at the finished size. Big things read from a few metres away, like banners and roller banners, are happy with 100 to 150. The “dpi” number saved inside the file is a red herring. Pixels and printed size are all that count.
The mistake almost everyone makes #
Someone opens a logo, sees “72 dpi” in the file info, changes it to 300 and thinks the job’s done. Nothing has changed. The image still has exactly the same number of pixels, so it prints exactly the same. A file doesn’t really have a resolution at all until you decide how big it’s going on paper or PVC.
Think of pixels as tiles. You’ve got a set number of them. Spread them over a business card and they’re packed tight. Spread the same tiles over a 6 ft banner and there are gaps you can spot from the pavement.
How much image resolution for print each job needs #
The further back people stand, the less detail their eyes can pick out. That’s why a banner gets away with far fewer pixels per inch than a flyer. These are the targets in our artwork guidelines, measured at the finished size:
| What you’re printing | How close people get | Target at full size |
|---|---|---|
| Stickers, labels, business cards, flyers, small safety signs | In the hand or at arm’s length | 300 dpi |
| Posters and boards from A3 to A1 | A metre, or a few metres | 150 to 300 dpi |
| Banners, roller banners, hoardings and backdrops | Several metres back | 100 to 150 dpi |
Those numbers are for photos, and for logos that only exist as pixel images. A proper vector logo and live text have no resolution limit at all, which we’ll come back to further down.
Check it yourself in two steps #
First, find the pixel size. On Windows, right-click the image, choose Properties, then the Details tab. On a Mac, use Get Info or the inspector in Preview. Then do one sum:
- Width in inches = finished width in mm ÷ 25.4
- Resolution at that size = pixel width ÷ width in inches
That’s all there is to checking image resolution for print. The 25.4 never moves: UK law fixes the inch at exactly 25.4 mm through the definition of the yard in the Weights and Measures Act 1985. If you’ve cropped the picture, repeat the sum for the height and go with whichever answer is lower.
Or flip it round: how big can it go?
Often the handier question is the reverse. Take the pixel width, divide by your target, multiply by 25.4, and you’ve got the widest it should print in millimetres. A picture 3000 pixels wide gives you:
- about 254 mm at 300 dpi, so fine across an A4 flyer and not much more;
- about 508 mm at 150 dpi, which covers the width of an A2 poster;
- about 762 mm at 100 dpi, enough for a logo panel on a banner but not the whole banner.
Worked examples #
| The job | The sum | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| A 4000 × 3000 pixel phone photo filling the width of an A2 poster (420 mm) | 420 ÷ 25.4 = 16.5 in; 4000 ÷ 16.5 | About 242 dpi: comfortably sharp |
| A 1200 pixel website logo stretched 900 mm wide on a 6 ft × 3 ft banner (1829 × 914 mm) | 900 ÷ 25.4 = 35.4 in; 1200 ÷ 35.4 | About 34 dpi: soft and blocky |
| The same logo cut down to 300 mm wide | 300 ÷ 25.4 = 11.8 in; 1200 ÷ 11.8 | About 102 dpi: fine on a banner |
| A full-height photo on an 850 × 2000 mm roller banner | 33.5 × 78.7 in at 100 dpi | Needs roughly 3350 × 7870 pixels as a minimum |
| A full-bleed photo on an A5 flyer (154 × 216 mm including bleed) | 6.06 × 8.5 in at 300 dpi | Needs roughly 1820 × 2550 pixels |
| A 20 mm logo on a PAT test label | 0.79 in at 300 dpi | Needs only about 240 pixels |
Look at rows two and three. Same file, different size, opposite result. If a logo is too small for the space, shrink it on the design. A crisp logo tucked in a corner beats a fuzzy one sprawled across the middle.
Where low-resolution pictures come from #
- Your own website. Header logos tend to be a few hundred pixels wide. Plenty for a label, hopeless for a banner.
- Social media. Platforms shrink and compress uploads, and the blocky patches that leaves behind look awful once printed large.
- Screenshots. You only get the pixels your screen was showing, often with a bit of blur thrown in.
- Chat apps. Plenty of them squash photos before sending. Send the original from the phone or computer, not the copy that came through a message.
- Upscaling. Enlarging a picture in software adds pixels but no new detail. It rarely rescues a small file for a big print.
The good news: most modern phone cameras take photos big enough for posters and a lot of banner jobs, as long as you send the original. If the file turns out to be huge, our guide on how to send large artwork files covers the upload limits.
Vector logos: image resolution for print stops mattering #
A vector logo is drawn as shapes and lines instead of pixels, so it scales up without going soft. One file works on a 51 × 25 mm label and on a 13 ft 1 in × 3 ft 3 in (4000 × 1000 mm) banner. Ask whoever designed your logo for an SVG, AI, EPS or PDF version. One catch: a PDF or EPS can simply wrap a pixel image, so zoom right in and check the edges stay clean.
Only got a small, fuzzy logo? Under Artwork on every product page there’s a Redraw / vectorise my logo from a low-res file option. We rebuild it as a clean vector file, and it’s yours to keep for future jobs.
What the online designer tells you #
Build your design online and the designer does the sums as you go. When a photo or logo drops below the target at the size you’ve placed it (100 dpi on large items such as banners, 150 dpi on small ones), the checks panel shows its resolution at that size, the figure we suggest, and a note that it may print blurred. You can shrink it, upload a bigger file or pick the logo redraw. It’s a warning rather than a block, so the call is yours. The print file uses your original picture at full size, not the lighter copy you see on screen. For placing and sizing a logo, see our guide to uploading your logo.
Uploading your own finished artwork instead? A person looks over every file for free, checks the image resolution for print at the size you’ve ordered, and tells you if something is likely to come out soft before anything gets made.