Have you ever encountered the following situation? The boss or customer wants to know what size your design will be printed, but the monitor does not show the actual size. You just have to adjust the layout along the ruler with a magnifying glass, and apply leaves to the screen. After this article, it will end!

Monitor resolution is measured in pixels

There is a terrible confusion all the time when it comes to resolution. Resolution in Photoshop means the number of pixels per square inch, monitor resolution means the number of pixels in the width and height of the screen. What to say about the resolution of the camera or the resolution of the camera.

The reason for the confusion is in incorrectly translated English terms. People constantly confuse the words resolution and dimension. You shouldn't blame them for this, the meaning is really very similar.

But now we are talking about the resolution of monitors. Your monitor's resolution refers to its width and height in pixels. And no more.

When I was in school, computer monitors had a resolution of no more than 800 by 600 pixels. And that was considered pretty good. Some of the lucky ones had monitors of 1024 by 768 pixels. These, of course, were considered the coolest in the entire school.

Time has passed, today my parents have an average monitor with a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels. What does this mean in simple terms? This means that in 10 years our monitors have gained an additional 1000 pixels in height and width. But their physical size remained about the same. Monitors haven't doubled in size. Perhaps they are slightly different in width. Widescreen, you know. But the resolution also changed the proportions.

So how many pixels are in one inch of your monitor?

How do I calculate the actual size on the screen?

Photoshop and sleight of hand will help answer the above question. Have you ever come across a scrupulous customer who wanted to understand how much space your sticker, flyer, cover or postcard will actually take? At the same time, the product did not go to print, does it exist only in the monitor?

In this situation, you are trying to explain that the sizes do not match, but approximately…. and start adjusting the size with the Magnifying glass tool, checking it against the ruler on the screen. Okay, I confess, I did this when I first started working.

The Zoom Tool will help you calculate the actual size. Select a magnifying glass in Photoshop and in the settings panel click the Print Size button. This button shows the actual printed size of your graphic.

And if everything is correct, you will get a complete discrepancy with the actual print size. That is, yes, the button will do something, increase or decrease the graphics. Unfortunately, not in the printed size, but in some kind of your own, invented. Doesn't it seem to work? Or not?

Mysterious 72 and 96 dpi

You have probably come across these two meanings. 72dpi, or rather 72 ppi (pixtels per inch). In theory, this means that your monitor has 72 pixels per inch. In practice, this would be true if the year was 85. After a while, the monitors improved their pixel performance. The screens were able to fit as much as 96 pixels per inch. This is so small that you can still see the pixels by looking at the monitor.

Monitors today come in very different resolutions and have the ability to fit in pixels per inch. This number ranges from 90 to 120 ppi.

When we create a new area in Photoshop, the program prompts us to set the resolution of the work area. The default is 72. However, if you choose a web graphics preset layout, the value changes to 96. Both values ​​mean absolutely nothing. This will not affect the work area in any way. The monitor shows as many pixels as there are pixels set in its operating system in width and height.

If you made a site 1280 pixels wide, be prepared for the fact that it will not be able to correctly display on monitors with a resolution of 800 pixels in width, although there are no such monitors to be found.

The question is, if permission does not affect anything, why is it needed at all? It is needed primarily for printing and preparation for printing. There, the number of pixels per inch is extremely important, as it determines the quality of the picture on paper.

In web design, resolution also affects the ratio of some physical parameters. Roughly speaking, on the View> Ruler ruler you will have 96 pixels in one inch instead of 72 pixels. The font size ratio will also change. Time New Roman 12p at 72px and Time New Roman 12p at 96px are different font sizes. Because Pt is a point physical size, and is based on physical quantities, and the visual size of a physical quantity depends on the associated resolution size. In our case, it is different. That is, 12p letters at 96 pixels are larger than 72x.

Otherwise, put at least 1ppi while you are preparing the layout for the screen, it does not matter, given that the ratio of resolution to the size of the work area can be recalculated in a matter of seconds.

How to measure a flyer on a monitor?

So how do you measure the actual resolution of your monitor, and why isn't the Print Size button working? Don't worry, everything is under control. The button does not work due to incorrect resolution settings. Artifacts of the past 72 or 96ppi crept into the resolution settings. You need to set the real resolution of your monitor and then everything will be as it should.

It is important to understand that the monitor supports multiple resolutions at once. For example, the one I'm working on now supports sizes from 800 by 600 to 1920 by 1080 pixels. The latter is of course set by default.

It is important to understand that at a size of 800 by 600 pixels there will be one number of pixels in an inch, but at a resolution of 1920 by 1080, it will be completely different. Much bigger. Of course, we care about the best resolution that your monitor can support, not the worst. We will make a start from it.

How to find out the resolution of your monitor

The resolution of your monitor must be written in the technical data sheet of the monitor. Most often it is impossible to find it. In the technical specifications, the real resolution is also not always written. Moreover, even the dimensions in width and height are not always written. For my old Samsung, I found the dimensions taking into account the plastic edging, and this is not at all what I need. You want a clean screen size and nothing more.

If you can't find the dimensions or resolution, go to plan B, stick and rope. Take a ruler, measure your monitor in width and height. I measured the LG monitor on which I am writing this article, it turned out to be 48 x 27 cm.

1 inch = 2.54 cm That is, my monitor is approximately 19 by 10.5 inches. I am rounding up because there is no particular need for precision. And what kind of accuracy can we talk about when measuring the monitor with a ruler.

The resolution on the monitor is set to 1920 x 1080 pixels. Divide the width of 1920 by 19. Roundedly, we get 100. When we divide 1080 by 10.5, we get the same number. That's it, the real monitor resolution is 100ppi.

That is, on a 1 inch monitor, at a resolution of 1920 by 1080, about 100 pixels fit.

Adjusting the resolution in Photoshop

Finally, how to customize the Print Size button in Photoshop? Going to the settings Edit> Preference. Open the Units & Rulers tab. In the dialog box, in the Screen Resolution setting, change the fictitious resolution to the correct one. In my case, 100. That's it.

Now try creating an A4 sheet at 300dpi. Let's say we are preparing a flyer for printing. Find a real A4 leaf on your desktop. In Photoshop, click the Print Size button. Attach a leaf to the screen. It is done.

Now, to the customer's question, "what size will it be in real life?" you don’t have to draw in the air with your hands, you don’t have to adjust the screen along the ruler, you don’t have to put it on a piece of paper and say, but this one. Just click on Print Size. Photoshop will show you everything.

I hope this article was useful to you and successful experiments in printing!

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Tablets and smartphones are equipped with screens with different aspect ratios and pixel densities, but these parameters are rarely indicated in the technical specifications.

Let's try to figure out all the tricks associated with these parameters. Let's start with tablets.
Here is the ratio of the screen sizes used in most modern tablets.

Notice how the 8 "screen with a 4: 3 aspect ratio is visually larger than the wide 7" screen. And the 10.1 "wide screen is one centimeter smaller than the 9.7" screen in height.

I have tabulated the parameters of the screens most often used in tablets.

Text on screens with low PPI (dots per inch) is not easy to read. I would not buy a tablet with a screen that has a PPI below 150. Even the iPad mini's 164 PPI seems insufficient to many. Screens with PPI over 200 are perfectly perceived.

It was a big discovery for me that a 9.7 "1024x768 screen has an even lower PPI than a 7" 800x480 screen.

Modern smartphones use screens with different aspect ratios (3: 2, 5: 3, 16: 9), but they are all pretty close. In the picture I have illustrated the aspect ratio of screens with the same diagonal and different aspect ratios.

The table of screens used in smartphones looks impressive.

As you can see from the table, there are very few low PPI screens. Of course, you shouldn't buy a smartphone with a screen that has a pixel density below 170 PPI. But again, it is better that this figure is above 200.

The vast majority of screens have a square pixel, so the aspect ratio of the screen can be calculated by knowing the number of dots in width and height. There are only two exceptions - "wrong" tablet screens with rectangular pixels - 800x480 (should have been 800x500) and 1024x600 (1024x640 would be correct).

I spent the evening creating these pictures and tables primarily for myself. I hope you find them useful as well.

Tables in excel file.

When buying a new monitor for your system unit, the consultants of any electronics store may ask you what screen resolution you prefer for the monitor. For those to whom such a question may seem like something from the section of the Chinese literacy, let’s put everything on the shelves. So.

What is screen resolution?

Let's start with what is the image that we see on the monitor. Any picture is assembled from special points - pixels. To somehow understand what we are talking about, let's draw an analogy with embroidery. From monotonous crosses of different colors, as a result, some kind of picture or pattern is obtained. So here, the pixels are crosses on the embroidery, only they are much smaller and tightly pressed against each other, therefore there is no feeling that the image consists of separate points, but looks whole. In addition, they are able to take on different colors as required by the situation. Thanks to this, we watch films, pictures, switch different windows and instantly see the corresponding changes on the monitor.

Pixels - nowhere without them

Pixels can be square or in some cases rectangular. There was even a wave of replacing the favorite square monitors with more elongated ones, which sometimes stretched the images too much. But more on that later.

It is the number of these same pixels per unit of length, or in other words their density, that determines the resolution of the monitors' screens.

Screen resolution options

The main parameters of the monitor resolution are height and width. So, if you go to the control panel on your computer and go to the screen settings section, you can go to this window (this particular window is for users of the Windows 7 operating system), which you will display in the photo below.

In this case, the monitor has a set maximum resolution of 1366 x 768 pixels. What does it mean? This means that the width from the left to the right sides of the monitor is 1366 pixels, and from the top to the bottom - 768. This is the optimal screen resolution of the monitor, given as an example, in which information from the screen will be transmitted as clearly and conveniently as possible for a person with an ordinary, normal vision.

We also see that the monitor can be set to another, lower resolution. By reducing the width to 1024 pixels, for example, images can be made more stretched. That is, in fact, the physical number of pixels, which determines the resolution of the monitor screen, does not change, it remains the same, but the display of images will be the same as it would be with a different extension.

Most popular screen formats

We mentioned the shape of pixels above, so let's take a closer look at this issue.

Earlier, and we are talking about a hundred years that have passed since the appearance of the first films, all monitors of the first models of televisions and computers had a 4: 3 format. Even before there were TVs, silent films were filmed in this format. What do these numbers mean? This is the aspect ratio of the displaying element, you can say the ratios of the height and width of the monitor. So, the dimensions can be as follows: 16:12 = 4x4: 3x4, 40:30 = 4x10: 3x10. Analog TVs for the most part have exactly this format and, accordingly, analog TV programs are also “fitted” to the 4: 3 frame. This also includes the 5: 4 format. It is also more "square", and it is used in the manufacture of monitors for computers. But gradually a new 16: 9 format burst into life, which gave rise to a new image size, and the screen resolution of a widescreen monitor appeared, constantly modernizing and changing in parameters.

Broadcasting: Convenient or Profitable?

The new trend has been touted for its convenience. So, a person should better perceive information on the sides of the monitor than above and below. But one must not lose sight of the fact that widescreen monitors are cheaper to produce. Yes, yes, if you take monitors 4: 3 and 16: 9, which have equal diagonals, it turns out that their area is different. A 4: 3 screen will have more room to work with than a 16: 9 screen, but it will take less resources to produce a wide monitor than a square one. Many opinions have been voiced both in defense and against widescreen monitors, and both have their pros and cons. For those people who started their acquaintance with computer tools in the days of the 4: 3 format, wide screens are inconvenient and take a long time to adapt to it.

So, when working in office programs such as Microsoft Word at the same scale, 5: 4 monitors will be able to display more lines than their wide-format counterparts. You do not need to constantly move up and down the sheet to find some information, you can see the entire sheet as a whole, and at the same time slightly lose in the readability of the text. Wide monitors stretch a "square" image, making round things oval, and stretching the faces and bodies of characters on the screen. Fortunately, they are working on all the problems. So, on a 5: 4 monitor, you can view a widescreen movie, only black borders will be added at the top and bottom so as not to cut off part of the image. Similarly, on a wide monitor, you can make sure that the picture has its original parameters and does not spread over the entire area of ​​the screen. In computer games, developers add the ability to support different formats, etc. But it is still important that the wide format is primarily beneficial for the manufacturer, and it is constantly being imposed on us, reducing the production of square screens. “Do you want a 5: 4 monitor? But this is not fashionable, now no one buys such! " Of course, she does not buy, because everyone is chasing fashion, not really thinking about convenience. And the funny thing is that screens with formats 4: 3, 5: 4 are cheaper than models of widescreen monitors, for the production of which less material is used, and which, logically, should be cheaper. But still, back to the issue of monitor screen resolution.

Problems in finding the optimal resolution

The fact is that the abundance of producers, who themselves decide which expansion is best for them, puts the consumer in a difficult position. There are more than three dozen different video standards with different resolutions and aspect ratios. Let's say the XGA video standard has a resolution of 1024 × 768 (786k) or 640 × 480 (307k), with an aspect ratio of 4: 3 when the VGA standard has four valid resolutions (640 × 480, 640 × 350, 320 × 200, 720 × 400 ) with the corresponding aspect ratios (4: 3, 64:35, 16:10, 9: 5). The WHUXGA video standard has the largest number of pixels by far - 7680 × 4800 (36864k), and it is widescreen - 16:10. But how to choose the one that suits a particular user?

What to consider when choosing a resolution for a monitor

The maximum screen resolution of a monitor is often the optimal one for working on a computer. It can be manually changed to one of those available in the list of resolution settings.
Since the issue of screen resolution is relevant for both TVs and computers, which are fundamentally different devices (although a TV can also be connected to a PC as a monitor), we will consider the optimal parameters separately for both types of devices.

TV: viewing comfort

Standard definition analog television, a monopoly in its field until some time, has always had an aspect ratio of 4: 3, and only relatively recently, a 16: 9 ratio began to appear, which is positioned as a high-definition image - digital television. We are now just at the stage when the transition from one standard to another is taking place, and how long this process will take is completely unclear. Some countries have long since switched to a new, more convenient and high-quality digital format, but this can be expected for a long time in the domestic open spaces. Therefore, you can buy a newfangled widescreen TV, in almost all models of which there is a prudent function of adjusting the resolution of monitor screens. After carefully studying the instructions, the user will be able to decide for himself in what form he should look a square picture on a rectangular monitor - stretch it to fill the entire monitor with it, or add a black frame on the sides to maintain the proportions of the original image.

PC monitor - a dilemma for gamers

If a gamer chooses a monitor, then he must first familiarize himself with the requirements for the preferred game / games, and then, based on these data, summarize which monitor screen resolutions are best suited for this. It is impossible to say unequivocally that such and such a model is ideal for all games in the world.

See the news in Odnoklassniki - is it worth bothering with the choice of resolution?

If you use a PC to work in office programs or just to view mail, news feed on social networks, etc., you need to choose solely from personal experience or consult with an experienced user who can explain all the points of interest to you.

This also includes the screen resolution of the laptop monitor. It is likely that it will be more convenient for transporting it (purely physically), so that it is rectangular and compact to fit in a backpack or bag. On a rectangular monitor, it is convenient to open two windows at once, when a 4: 3 or 5: 4 monitor gives you more space for viewing and working on one document.

Screen resolution is the number of vertical and horizontal dots that make up the screen. A point is called a pixel, and therefore resolution is measured in pixels. For example, 800x600 means that the device fits 600 pixels horizontally on the screen, and 800 pixels vertically.
The higher the screen resolution, the more detailed the picture you can get:

And the clearer the small text labels will look:

In addition to screen resolution, it is important to consider screen size as well. For example, a 480x360 resolution for a smartphone with a screen of up to 3.2 ”will be optimal for work - it is convenient to read text on it, and photos will be clearer and more realistic when viewed. But on displays from 3.3 "and higher with the same resolution, angular images and rough outlines of text will already be noticeable (as in the pictures above).

For convenience, we have made a pivot table showing the display quality for different screen diagonals - depending on the resolution used in them:

It is important to remember that using high-resolution screens will reduce the battery life of your device.

Examples of screen resolutions for various devices

Navigators
Display resolution of navigators varies from standard 320 x 240 px... to widescreen 800 x 480 px

PDAs and smartphones
The resolution of the display of a PDA or smartphone can be 240 x 320 px... or 480 x 640 pixels(VGA resolution). The first is standard, while the second makes the screen more comfortable to work with, since more information is placed on the display and looks clearer.

Laptops
There are many laptop screen resolution options:

• SXGA (Super XGA) - screen resolution 1280x1024 pixels. (aspect ratio 5: 4).
• SXGA + -screen resolution 1400x1050 pix. (aspect ratio 4: 3).
• UXGA (Ultra XGA) - screen resolution 1600x1200 pixels. (aspect ratio 4: 3).
• WXGA (Wide XGA) - screen resolution 1280x800 pixels. (aspect ratio 16:10). Most common in laptops with 15.4-inch displays.
• WXGA + - screen resolution 1440x900 pixels. (aspect ratio 16:10).
• WSXGA + (Wide SXGA +) - screen resolution 1680x1050 pixels. (aspect ratio 16:10).
• WUXGA (Wide Ultra XGA) - screen resolution 1920x1200 pixels. (aspect ratio 16:10).

From year to year, monitors have improved mainly only in increasing the resolution of the matrix and all this has become the reason for the desire of people to view content of ever better quality. Fortunately, production does not stand still, and more and more powerful and sophisticated computer devices are entering the world market. They are used to create and broadcast this high quality content.

Screen resolution 16: 9, like 16:10, is the standard for modern times. In this case, the resolution of the matrix is ​​1920 x 1080 and 1920 x 1200 pixels, respectively. However, now you should not judge the size of the monitor by it, since even some mobile phones with a screen diagonal of 5 inches have a matrix resolution of more than the FullHD standard (1920 x 1080 pixels).

Modern monitors from the middle price segment, having screen resolutions of 16: 9 and 16:10, usually have 22-24 inches. But it was not always so. The optimal screen resolution varied at different times.

Short story

At the beginning of the history of creating and playing content, the aspect ratio of the screen was 1: 1, that is, "square". This solution was used only in photography and allowed the use of the composition of the frame both vertically and horizontally. Later, a similar format began to be used when creating films.

The “square” was replaced by the 5: 4 format, which was also called 1.25: 1. It has been used in some computer monitors, and many people have confused it with the more common 4: 3 aspect ratio. The only difference was in the resolution of 1280 x 1024 pixels. Some "experts" and "professionals" noted a more accurate rendering of geometry on this screen format, but not everyone agrees with this, and disputes are still going on.

Immediately after the "square" in order to expand the visible scene and frame, a 4: 3 or 1.33: 1 aspect ratio was created. This format first became widespread in photography and cinematography, and then completely became the standard for broadcasting analog television. You can remember the period when in every house there were first huge wooden, and later plastic flat-screen TVs with an almost square screen to receive that broadcasting standard. Computer monitors also received this format and for a long time had resolutions of 1024 x 768, 1152 x 864 and 1600 x 1200 pixels. Subsequently, they were replaced by widescreen devices with a resolution of 16: 9.

There were also 3: 2 and 14: 9 formats. The first did not prove itself to be anything significant, but the second was an intermediate format for the transition from analog TV broadcasting 4: 3 to widescreen and easily fit into the old format in the form of small black stripes at the top and bottom of the screen.

Modern 16:10 received computer monitors and a large number of laptops with a resolution of 1280 x 800, 1440 x 900 and 1680 x 1050 pixels per inch. The advantage of this format is greater in comparison with the most massive one, which has a resolution of 16: 9. This format is widely used in gaming monitors.

The transition to digital was marked by the creation of a single HDTV standard for high definition television, having an aspect ratio of 16: 9. The resolution of the matrix of screens in this case is: 1366 x 768, 1600 x 900, 1280 x 720 and 1920 x 1080 pixels. Now there are much more capacious matrices of the same format. What is the difference for the user?

Screen aspect ratio at home and in the office

Nowadays people use a lot of different computer devices, mobile gadgets and wearable electronic devices both at home and at work in the office. All of these technologies are designed to simplify and speed up work, as well as entertain owners.

Screen resolutions 16: 9 and 16:10 are found both in a computer or laptop, and in a TV that broadcasts digital content and digital television broadcasting. For fans of computer video games, both of these formats are ideal and they differ slightly, but 16:10 formats are usually not used on TVs.

For workers working with spreadsheets, text, or 3D modeling and drawings, having a slightly taller vertical screen (16:10 versus 16: 9) allows for additional important working and viewing space, which contributes to better work.

Content matters

Having a monitor with a 16: 9 screen, you also need to have the digital content itself. It is created both on video and photo recording devices and on the computer devices themselves. In the modern world, the media world is being adjusted to FullHD and 4K standards with a 16: 9 resolution, since, unifying content, equipment and content manufacturers are abandoning non-standard solutions in favor of generally accepted norms. Such actions allowed to reduce the cost of developing new formats and their implementation, as well as freeing up production resources for improving and improving products in other areas.

Outgoing signal

The video signal itself is formed in a special device (video card or video adapter, ratio 16: 9). In this case, the resolution varies within the limits selected by the user. The higher the resolution, the greater the load on the power of the hardware part of both the video adapter and the entire electronic device as a whole. Modern video devices are capable of broadcasting video or game content in three-dimensional image with the highest definition (up to 4K and UltraHD).

For fans of high-quality movies and computer games

Modern monitors with an aspect ratio of 16: 9 and 16:10 for connoisseurs of game and film content do not allow them to fully immerse themselves in the digital world, since they are limited by the width of the view, and the human eye perceives much more with its own. For this, the developers of monitors and TVs have created a special series of their devices with a very They received an aspect ratio of 21: 9 and a resolution of 2560 x 1080 and 3440 x 1440.