What DPI for printing? Photos, posters, stickers, T-shirts and Procreate, with the pixel counts that actually matter

The short answer is 300 DPI, and for a photo that goes in a frame it is the right one. But the same number is wasteful for a poster nobody will stand closer to than a metre, useless for a T-shirt if the design started as a small web image, and beside the point for digital art until you know the size it will be printed at. DPI on its own decides nothing. It is a ratio: pixels divided by inches. What decides whether a print looks sharp is how many pixels you have for the size you are printing, and how far away people will stand.

So this guide gives the DPI to aim for in each case, and then translates it into the pixel counts you can actually check.

The one formula behind every answer

Pixels needed = print size in inches × DPI. A 4 × 6 inch photo at 300 DPI needs 1200 × 1800 pixels. Run the same sum for anything else and you know whether your file is big enough before you order. Metric sizes work the same way: divide the millimetres by 25.4 to get inches, then multiply.

Photos: 300 DPI, 240 if you must

For prints you hold or hang at arm’s length, 300 DPI is the standard photo labs work to, and 240 DPI is hard to tell apart. Below about 200 DPI a 4 × 6 print starts to look soft and edges go slightly blocky. The pixel counts at 300 DPI:

• 4 × 6 in (10 × 15 cm): 1200 × 1800 px
• 5 × 7 in: 1500 × 2100 px
• 8 × 10 in: 2400 × 3000 px
• A4 (210 × 297 mm): 2480 × 3508 px
• A3 (297 × 420 mm): 3508 × 4961 px

A 12-megapixel phone photo is about 4032 × 3024 px, which covers everything up to roughly 13 × 10 inches at 300 DPI. Phones are not the problem for photo prints. Screenshots, images saved from messaging apps and pictures downloaded from social feeds are, because they were shrunk long before you got them.

Posters and large prints: it depends on the distance

A poster is looked at from further away, and the eye cannot resolve 300 dots per inch at two metres. The working rule print shops use:

• Viewed at arm’s length (small posters, prints on a desk): 300 DPI.
• Viewed from about a metre (A3 to A2 on a wall): 150 DPI is plenty.
• Viewed from several metres (A1, A0, shop displays): 100 DPI, and billboards go far lower.

The useful consequence: an A2 poster at 150 DPI needs 2480 × 3508 px, exactly the same file as an A4 at 300 DPI. An A1 at 100 DPI needs 2339 × 3311 px. So a good phone photo prints as a wall poster without upscaling, as long as it is a real photo and not something re-saved through five apps first. Ask the shop what they want if the print is going to be inspected closely, such as exhibition work; many large-format printers are happiest with files supplied at 150 DPI at the final size.

Stickers and labels: 300 DPI at the sticker’s real size

Stickers are small and people look at them closely, so treat them like photos: 300 DPI at the finished dimensions. A 3-inch round sticker needs 900 × 900 px, a 2 × 3 inch label needs 600 × 900 px. Two things trip people up. First, text and logos should be vector (SVG, PDF, AI) wherever possible, because a rasterised logo at sticker size shows jagged edges that a photo would hide. Second, most sticker printers want a bleed, a few millimetres of extra image around the cut line, so make the artwork slightly larger than the sticker rather than exactly the sticker size.

T-shirts and screen printing: 300 DPI at print size, vector if you can

For direct-to-garment and transfer printing, prepare the design at 300 DPI at the size it will be printed. A design 12 inches wide needs 3600 px across; a small chest logo 4 inches wide needs 1200 px. The classic mistake is taking a 1000-pixel logo made for a website and printing it 12 inches wide, which works out to 83 DPI and prints visibly fuzzy. For screen printing, shops separate the design into colours and usually prefer vector files; if you only have a raster image, the same 300 DPI rule applies and clean, high-contrast edges matter more than anything. Shops vary, so read their artwork spec before exporting.

Procreate and digital art: set the DPI before the first stroke

This is the case where DPI genuinely has to be decided up front. Create the canvas in inches or millimetres at the size you intend to print, at 300 DPI, and Procreate works out the pixels for you. An A4 canvas at 300 DPI is 2480 × 3508 px; an 8 × 10 inch canvas is 2400 × 3000 px. You cannot add real detail afterwards by typing a bigger DPI into the export dialog; that only changes the label, not the picture. Two caveats: larger canvases reduce the number of layers Procreate allows on a given iPad, and if you might ever print a piece large, painting at 300 DPI for the biggest size you can imagine is cheaper than repainting.

Scanning: the other place DPI really is a resolution

When you scan, DPI decides how many pixels are captured, so it is not a label here. 300 DPI is right for documents and for photos you will reprint at the same size. Use 600 DPI for photos you want to enlarge, or for small originals like a 35 mm print you want as a large picture. Anything above 600 for ordinary prints mostly captures paper grain.

When a website asks for 300 DPI

Print-on-demand sites, photo labs and some application portals check the DPI value written inside the file and refuse images that say 72 or 96, even when the pixel count is fine. That value is metadata. If you already have enough pixels, you do not need to resample anything: set the image to 300 DPI and the pixels stay exactly as they were. The same tool exists for 600 DPI, 200 DPI and 72 DPI, and it runs in your browser without uploading the file. What it will not do is invent detail: if a 4 × 6 print needs 1200 × 1800 px and your image is 600 × 900, relabelling it 300 DPI produces a file that passes the check and a print that still looks soft. Upscaling does the same thing with extra blur. The honest fix is a bigger source image.

If you want the longer version of why the number in the file is only a label, read Is 300 DPI high resolution?, and for the kilobytes-versus-pixels confusion, How many KB should a photo be to print?.

Quick reference

• Framed photos, cards, photo books: 300 DPI (240 acceptable).
• Posters viewed from a metre: 150 DPI. From several metres: 100 DPI.
• Stickers and labels: 300 DPI at finished size, vector for text, add bleed.
• T-shirts, mugs, transfers: 300 DPI at print size; vector preferred for screen printing.
• Procreate and other digital art: create the canvas at 300 DPI at the intended print size.
• Scanning: 300 DPI for same-size reprints and documents, 600 DPI to enlarge.
• Screens: DPI does not apply; only pixel dimensions matter.