Does this DPI ppi is overkill?

rusabrbl

So, I work on game dev company as generalist, and the tech artist like to create and ask the artist to create 1024x1024 with 300 dpi for icon design on PS, that would be displayed no bigger than 300x300 or even 150x150. I just scratch my head because it's not just make the PS bigger, but sometimes makes my PS lag, leave alone the RAM management and disk scratch would be higher. when I ask why it need to be that overkill, he reply with "Because phone screens have high as 500 dpi or so". Is it really necessary? What do yout hink? Because sometimes I get a character illustration for me to animate on unity as bigger as 7k document with 300dpi, and its lag AF.

pxgeek

I think the dpi setting has absolutely no effect on how it will look on screens...it's only for printing. 1024 pixels is 1024 pixels.

Is that a big icon..yes. Is it overkill...maybe, but who am I to say.

You can always ask for a better machine

Neox

yep. dpi is a print setting for dots per inch printed. has nothing to do with the pixel dimensions. its 1024px at 50dpi as much as 1024px at 5000dpi. but if you print it at said dpi it will be significantly smaller in real world dimensions.

what you'll likely mean is pixel per inch. which similarily means that 1024px will be significantly smaller in real world scale when at higher ppi vs smaller ppi

pior

Well to be fair, while the OP is obviously not dealing with print media, "dot per inch" and "pixels per inch" are still very relevant (and imho interhchangeable) terms when dealing with various phone/tablet displays. So sure, the dpi value in the metadata of the file *is* irrelevant, but as a concept in this context it very much matters since the art needs to work with various displays of various pixel densities.

@rusabrbl : my advice would be to simplify the interection with the tech person as much as possible, by completely removing the terms dpi and ppi from the conversation. In practice : ask him to only give you image specifications in raw pixels, and nothing else. That way he'll be the one having to figure out all the spec profiling based on the target devices to find the right compromise ... which is *litterally* his job. Do not accept any vague answer like "make it as big as possible". And also, be ready to negotiate if the request ends up being unreasonably large to a point where it slows you down in any way.

Now as for loose estimates : 1024*1024 for a source for an icon is completely fair imho, as lower than that you'd have trouble controlling details. As for illustration art you'll likely never need anything over 4000 pixels in either dimensions.

rusabrbl

Neox said:

yep. dpi is a print setting for dots per inch printed. has nothing to do with the pixel dimensions. its 1024px at 50dpi as much as 1024px at 5000dpi. but if you print it at said dpi it will be significantly smaller in real world dimensions.

what you'll likely mean is pixel per inch. which similarily means that 1024px will be significantly smaller in real world scale when at higher ppi vs smaller ppi

That's exactly what I thought. Thank you for clarification.

rusabrbl

pxgeek said:

I think the dpi setting has absolutely no effect on how it will look on screens...it's only for printing. 1024 pixels is 1024 pixels.

Is that a big icon..yes. Is it overkill...maybe, but who am I to say.

You can always ask for a better machine

Thank you for the confirmation.

rusabrbl

pior said:

Well to be fair, while the OP is obviously not dealing with print media, "dot per inch" and "pixels per inch" are still very relevant (and imho interhchangeable) terms when dealing with various phone/tablet displays. So sure, the dpi value in the metadata of the file *is* irrelevant, but as a concept in this context it very much matters since the art needs to work with various displays of various pixel densities.

@rusabrbl : my advice would be to simplify the interection with the tech person as much as possible, by completely removing the terms dpi and ppi from the conversation. In practice : ask him to only give you image specifications in raw pixels, and nothing else. That way he'll be the one having to figure out all the spec profiling based on the target devices to find the right compromise ... which is *litterally* his job. Do not accept any vague answer like "make it as big as possible". And also, be ready to negotiate if the request ends up being unreasonably large to a point where it slows you down in any way.

Now as for loose estimates : 1024*1024 for a source for an icon is completely fair imho, as lower than that you'd have trouble controlling details. As for illustration art you'll likely never need anything over 4000 pixels in either dimensions.

Well, on this project thankfully it has cell shading. So I can work it on vector based app. The funny thing is, Ai doesn't have any export setting regarding to dpi and ppi as I recall. And I remember when I ask, why ppi is so matter on phone with high ppi? pixels still will be pixels tho. Then he reply to zoom to my PS ui button, and it's looks like vector. Im more confused than before. Thank you for the reply. Much help.

pior

Pixels(or dots) per inch as a concept are very relevant to making content for a phone display. The dpi/ppi metadata itself inside a raster image file doesn't matter at all, but the concept of determining the desired density for the final images in context of the target devices is absolutely something to consider, because phones can have :

- different physical form factors/dimensions
- different pixel densities depending on the display.


With that in mind : 

- It's the job of the tech person to tell you precisely the dimensions in pixels that they need for the images. Nothing else. The word "dpi/ppi" should never be in their mouth when requesting images from you.
- It's your job as the graphic artist to know how to use the art software to produce the appropriate requested content. *Of course* any vector app can export at any resolution/pixel density, as that's litterally their whole point. You need to take the necessary time to master this aspect of the software you are using (document properties and export settings). And if needed, making it clear to the team that you need some time to figure out this aspect of the pipeline if someone can't help you with it. And even though a document from a vector software will have a notion of "dots/pixels" per inch, these words should never me in your mouth when delivering the final images for the app (unless the app/engine deals with vector images natively, but you haven't mentionned that so I suppose that's not the case)

Put differently : at the moment, both people involved (the tech guy and yourself) are making the situation more complicated than it needs to be.

ZacD

Also desktop icons are ICO files, which are multiple images typically up to 256x256 that the OS smoothly scales and switches between.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/uxguide/vis-icons

pior

At @ZacD : well, it is extremely unlikely that this kind of encapsulated multi-resolution OS icons is what is being discussed here ...
(... but hey, perhaps it is ! Who knows.)