🖨 Print Size Calculator

Print resolution is a division, and the sharpness question is geometry: inches = pixels ÷ dpi, and the dpi a viewer needs depends on how far they stand. A magazine at 300 dpi is read at 30 cm; a billboard at roughly 30 dpi is read from 30 m — and at that distance the eye literally cannot resolve the dots. This page gives you both halves: the size at your dpi, and the size at your viewing distance.

The arc-minute is doing all the work

Standard visual acuity resolves about one arcminute — at 25 cm that is a dot pitch of roughly 0.073 mm, which is where the 300-dpi magazine convention comes from: it is the resolution at which printing becomes invisible to reading distance, not a magic number the ink invented. Double the viewing distance and you can halve the dpi, which is why signage shops print huge murals at 50–100 dpi and billboard operators laugh at the word dpi entirely. “300 dpi required” is therefore half the answer: always ask “at what distance?”.

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