What resolution should I use for my photos in Inkscape?

Question

question from a non-graphic designer here who doesn't fully get the whole 'resolution' thing.

From what I understand, Inkscape saves all embedded images as 90dpi. However for printing, 300 dpi is typically recommended.

If I add a 300dpi image to an Inkscape document, it will appear much bigger than its correct size as it scales down to 90dpi. Does this mean that I am OK to save at 90dpi, because I am shrinking the size of the image?

What about if I have a low resolution photo, say 72dpi, but the photo is large and I am happy to shrink it? Should I first change the image to 90dpi in Photoshop before embedding it in Inkscape, or can I just add it to Inkscape and resize it?

Answer 1

'What should be the resolution" depends on various things.But most import thing is "Distance form where it will be viewd". 300dpi is typical thing for prints.But not for all types of print.Business card, magazine, posters which are used to view form close distance, require higher dpi(240-300 dpi) for avoid pixelation.But when printing huge billboard which will be viewed form a great distance generally print as low as 12-15 dpi, but we don't see any pixelation, and it appears sharp.So its really depends upon in where your art work will be displayed or to be viewd from.Resolution is not the main thing, import thing is how many pixels do you have in the image natively.

Answer 2

There seem to be two different possible questions here,

1) What should I do to combine vector and raster graphics to make a good quality print.

2) How can I maintain raster image quality with Inkscape.

For the second possible question the answer would be a purely academic dissertation on the best possible method for turning a screw with a hammer.

Inkscape is primarily concerned with editing vector graphics for which resolution has no real meaning, and as such doesn't have strong tools available to handle raster issues such as pixel density.

If this is the question which was intended this post should not be accepted as the answer.

For the first possible question my suggestion would be to import your vector graphics into Photoshop instead of the other way around. Photoshop isn't the best tool around for vector graphics, but I promise you that it's way better at curves than Inkscape is at handling pixels.

When you import the .SVG into Photoshop it open a dialog which will allow you to open the document at what ever size/resolution will match the raster photo, perhaps scaling it up or down a bit to fit (best to get this as close to correct as possible at this stage).

Now you can easily alter the document's properties to whatever settings you feel are suited to the output you intend ( typically 72dpi for Web, 300-600dpi for print), being careful of course to lock the Height, Width and DPI together to avoid re-sampling, unless it's absolutely required, in which case you will won't be trying to do so in a piece of software which is built from the ground up to output curves instead of pixels.