Image size & resolution

[industrygothica]

Maybe this has been asked and answered here before, but I can't find it if it has...

I'm not interested in using a VTT for a direct connection to my players, but more to load premade photoshop maps so that I can maneuver the tokens and whatnot, and then export a screenshot to EN World.

The question I have is about resolution... dpi, ppi, csi, fbi, whatever; is there a minimum screen size/resolution that is considered standard? Basically I'd like to make a custom preset size in photoshop that I can just open and start drawing.

Thanks in advance.


-IG

[jfrazierjr]

Maybe this has been asked and answered here before, but I can't find it if it has...

I'm not interested in using a VTT for a direct connection to my players, but more to load premade photoshop maps so that I can maneuver the tokens and whatnot, and then export a screenshot to EN World.

The question I have is about resolution... dpi, ppi, csi, fbi, whatever; is there a minimum screen size/resolution that is considered standard? Basically I'd like to make a custom preset size in photoshop that I can just open and start drawing.

Thanks in advance.


-IG

For best results, 50 px for "5 foot" square or some higher factor of that is best. Most people make their maps using 100, 150, or even 200px per 5 foot section.

Joe

[industrygothica]

Bah.. good thing my wife's a math teacher!

[Midgardsormr]

Here's a breakdown of the steps I use to set my canvas size.

* Make a sketch and estimate a scale for it.
* From the sketch, determine the total width in feet of the area I'll be mapping.
* Pick a pixel-foot scale. For VTT battlemats, that would be on the order of 20 - 40 pixels / foot.
* Multiply the number of feet by the number of pixels in each foot. (A 75' X 125' battlemat at 40px / foot gives an images resolution of 3000 X 5000.)
* Evaluate whether the target resolution seems appropriate and/or useable. If it's too big, adjust the pixels / foot downward. If it's rather small, adjust pixels / foot upward.

If you're designing only for VTTs, dpi settings don't matter at all--you can safely ignore that field.

[industrygothica]

Thanks guys - I really appreciate your help.

See, that's why I love this site. I know I can ask a question and get at least a couple of good answers fairly quickly. You guys rock.

-IG

[Ascension]

I read the Dunjinni forums for pointers there. If I remember rightly, they all seem to prefer 200px per 5 foot when doing encounter maps, but will settle for 100 or 150. For city or regional maps I don't know though, maybe in the CC3 website forums.

[Midgardsormr]

That'd be 40 px / foot, then. I'll adjust my earlier advice to suit.

Incidentally, as Gamerprinter pointed out some months ago, if you design at 200 px / 5 feet, 200 dpi, and a printed scale of 1" = 5 feet, your printed image res and VTT image res are identical.