Warning: I was using 300 DPI for all my web art for like 2 years

So I've been making digital paintings and posting them online since 2021. Last month I uploaded a piece to ArtStation and someone in the comments asked why my file was 24 inches wide at 300 DPI for a screen display. I honestly didn't know what they meant. I thought higher DPI always meant better quality. Turns out screens only show at 72 DPI and I was just making unnecessarily huge files for no reason. My exports were like 50MB each for no benefit. Has anyone else misunderstood DPI settings for digital vs print work?

3 comments

3 Comments

blairc903d ago

Yeah I did the exact same thing for about a year and a half. I was exporting all my digital paintings at 300 DPI thinking I was being super professional. My files were massive like 80MB each for stuff I was just posting on Twitter and Instagram. It was honestly embarrassing when a friend who actually knows design pointed it out to me. I felt so dumb when they explained that screens only show 72 DPI and I was just wasting space and making everything load slow for zero reason. Now I just export at 72 DPI at a reasonable pixel size and my files are like 2MB tops. Still bitter about all that wasted hard drive space though.

kim.nina3d ago

Isn't it wild how we all just ASSUME more is better without stopping to think why? I see this with people buying massive external hard drives for stuff they'll never use again, or when I see folks at the store grabbing the biggest pack of paper towels because it's a "better deal" but then they can't even fit it in their cabinet. Just like your DPI thing, we've all got that one pointless rule we follow because someone told us once and we never questioned it. I still catch myself running my dryer on "heavy duty" for a single t-shirt cause that's what my mom always did. It's basically a life hack to just stop and ask yourself "wait, do I even NEED this to be that big or intense?

baker.holly2d ago

Is it really that big of a deal? Your art still got online, it still looked the same as it would have at 72 DPI. A few extra seconds of load time on someone else's browser isn't worth getting bitter over.