Photoimpact X3 - crop in inches not pixels

[mfvideos]

HI! Just trying to simulate a book cover. 6x9 in. each for front and back, with .75 inch for spine. It needs to be all one graphic...the whole cover, as you would look at a book face down with pages spread open and spine in the middle. I can't just create each cover, and then the spine... so it need to be 12.75" wide and 9 in. tall.

I suspect my problem is that I need to do this with a dpi of no less than 300.

I tried opening a new page in inches (13 wide and 9 tall) and it's opening in pixels. It's huge!

I would be happy if it works if I just used the flat setting of 14 x 9 inch document as I could crop off that extra inch somehow.

I then tried to resize my huge graphic and I again used inches instead of pixels and it did not work..it's huge

I am using the dpi of 300 but if that automatically enlarges my graphic, then I can't work with it as that size. Also I kept the aspect ratios, and checked printer/landscape when resizing.

Well, I can't think of another thing to try. I really do need this to be exactly 12.75" wide and exactly 9" tall.
Thanks
Kathy

[Ron P.]

Don't worry about the 300 DPI until you're ready to print. DPI means nothing to a computer, or television. DPI is Dots per Inch, which is what a printer uses. To display images computers use PPI, Pixels per Inch. What size in Pixels are the images you're going to use? Digital cameras, will give you rough idea of how large a print can be made from the resolution sizes, like 5MP, 8MP and so on. The more pixels you have, the larger the print can be made without any degradation, which is pixelization.

When you first start your project, the resolution settings at the bottom are not DPI, they are PPI. If you select the Printer resolution, you'll notice that it defaults to 600. Again that's not 600 DPI, that's 600 PPI. A computer does not understand dots. The file sizes are going to be rather large when you're dealing with images that need to be large. For the most part, a digital photo that was taken at a setting of 5-8MP (mega-pixels) should work for a print your size. Most of them will print good 8" x 10" photos.

[mfvideos]

Thanks! Now I understand that dots-per-inch has nothing to do with pixels-per-inch.

I Googled a bit now and found that there is no set answer to "How many pixels per inch" because it depends on the dpi?

So I take my inches and multipy them by 3 because I want 300 dots per inch, and that will determine the size in pixels, in Photoimpact... and it really doesn't matter until it's printed.?

My last question: Is there anyway to convert a Photoimpact image into a pdf? I am going to make a book in Creatspace (Amazon) and the book cover needs to be submitted as a PDF. Natually, I love my Photoimpact and have no intention of buying Adobe.

Thanks
Kathy

[wds937]

Is there anyway to convert a Photoimpact image into a pdf?

I don't think PhotoImpact can directly convert to a PDF file, but there is software from other vendors that can.

Also, there are applications, such as PDF-XChange, that allow you to use the Print function to create the PDF. The application installs as a printer on your computer. My experience with two or three such applications is that the creation of the PDF is easy, but it is not very flexible. My experience with this is limited, though.