Resolution Confusion

Extract

The most persistent misconception made in digital imaging among those who use our core facility involves the understanding of digital resolution; and the greatest mistakes result from a mis-use of the “Image Size” dialogue box in Adobe Photoshop. Add to that, an intractable desire to use Microsoft PowerPoint and to somehow make Photoshop and PowerPoint agree about the nature of images that open in both programs, weighted toward the miserable resolutions and compression required by PowerPoint, changes in original data become as common as dandelions on a lawn. Yet, changes in data that result from increasing or, more commonly, decreasing pixels (what is called re-sampling), can be avoided.

Resolution, as many of us have learned, is the ability to discriminate between two points in space, a phenomenon made easier by high contrast objects versus those that are low in contrast.