BoomerZ
Aug '23

I see lots of people talk about what size they use on their artwork for digital. It usually goes like "I work at 960 x 1440 px at 300 dpi" I thought an explanation of what that does and doesn't mean.

1: DPI has no bearing on the quality of your picture unless your canvas is working as a measurement such as inches or mm. DPI is a print term for paper that is measured in inches or mm.. Example: my canvas size is 8x12 inches. That means within that canvas size there are 300 px per inch of the size of the canvas you are working on.(the "D" in DPI means one dot which for digital means a pixel. In print that means an ink dot) In that example, you would be 2400px across. If your canvas is 960 x 1440 px, it doesn't matter what the dpi is. There is only 960 pix across. In that example, at 960pix across and 300 dpi, your picture, if you print it, will be just over 3 inches across. If you increase the dpi to 600, the detail doesn't become better, the printed picture just becomes smaller. Same if you make it 75 dpi, the printed picture becomes bigger but the quality would be very pixelated as the quality of the picture stays the same. In both of these examples, the digital picture on your screen would look exactly the same, with the same quality.

2: So if you plan on printing your comics one day, you need to take into consideration of the DPI of the final print. A tapas canvas of 960 x 1440 px, printed at normal 300 dpi of a printer, will be tiny (3x4 inches). And if you blow it up to the size of a page, it will be a pixelated mess. This is the reason to do the original artwork at least 3 times larger than the stated 960 x 1440 px of the tapas canvas. It will allow you the freedom to one day print it if you choose. You then resize as a separate save-as file that is resized in the art program you are using. DO NOT use tapas auto resizing. Any half decent art program will resize better than any website will resize. You want to control the final product, not a website.

Hoping this will explain more what DPI means in the context of a digital medium.