How To Pick the Right Size/Resolution for your Art - Beginner Illustration Tips

🛑 You may be missing a crucial piece of information when setting up your digital art canvas size!

I get tons of questions about working in Adobe Fresco and digital drawing in general, especially when it comes to image resolution and quality. So, I thought I'd make a quick video to break it down for you because, trust me, there's a lot of info out there, but it can get pretty confusing without the full picture.

You've probably heard that your image must be 300 DPI (dots per inch) or PPI (pixels per inch) for it to be high resolution—and while that’s true, it’s only part of the equation.

The reason for this comes down to that pesky "I" in DPI and PPI. That “I” stands for inches. Without inches in the equation, 300dpi/ppi doesn't mean anything.

When you set your image to 300 DPI or PPI, you're saying there are 300 pixels in every inch of your document. But here's the catch – if your image dimensions are small, like 4x6 inches, the math checks out to only 1200 pixels, which isn't that big. It will look pixelated when you zoom in or try to print it any bigger than 4 inches wide. This may no be an issue if it will only be used at that size—however it will make your drawing experience less than ideal.

On a side note, all this only applies to pixel-based artwork. If you're working in vector art, the resolution doesn't really matter because vectors are all about points and math, not pixels. They can be scaled infinitely without losing quality.

In this video I talk about how I get around that and what canvas sizes I typically work with.
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