What resolution do you design at?

[Jalyha]

Everyone is being so helpful But I'm not real bright So..

Right now I have a 4000 x 3000 image (or is that reversed?). The setting for the file on GIMP is at 72 *PPI*.

I can't figure out the "export" thing, so I've been doing the "Select all" - > "Copy visible" thing, pasting it into paint, and saving as a .jpg.

But it worked until I went from 3000 x 3000 to 4000 x 3000. Then, I tried to upload that picture, and it said it was too big (6 point something mb where we can only do 4 point something...)

So I resized the image to about 85% (I tried more, but it didn't work till 85) and the forums accepted it, but the picture looked AWFUL.

If I open a new image and set it to, say, 300 PPI, and copied everything over to that image, would that A) Change the file size? and B) Make the picture look better if I *do* have to resize it?

Or... I don't know. How to make my picture pretty again? ;_;

What I'm trying to figure out is how to post the picture the way it's saved on GIMP

[Jacktannery]

Everyone is being so helpful But I'm not real bright So..

Right now I have a 4000 x 3000 image (or is that reversed?). The setting for the file on GIMP is at 72 *PPI*.

I can't figure out the "export" thing, so I've been doing the "Select all" - > "Copy visible" thing, pasting it into paint, and saving as a .jpg.

But it worked until I went from 3000 x 3000 to 4000 x 3000. Then, I tried to upload that picture, and it said it was too big (6 point something mb where we can only do 4 point something...)

So I resized the image to about 85% (I tried more, but it didn't work till 85) and the forums accepted it, but the picture looked AWFUL.

If I open a new image and set it to, say, 300 PPI, and copied everything over to that image, would that A) Change the file size? and B) Make the picture look better if I *do* have to resize it?

Or... I don't know. How to make my picture pretty again? ;_;

What I'm trying to figure out is how to post the picture the way it's saved on GIMP

Jalyha, yeah its a bit confusing but I will try to help. The posters above explained much better than I can but here goes:

1. Recently I was asked in EN World forums to help a fellow DM resize an encounter map for printing. He had an encounter map from a module that he wanted to print out so that each grid square measured one inch. To help him I did the following: I took the encounter map .jpg and opened it up in GIMP. I checked its resolution: it was at 72ppi, which is standard. Then I measured the size in pixels of one grid square. It measured 39 pixels across. So in GIMP I went to 'IMAGE > SCALE IMAGE' and changed the resolution to 39. This made NO CHANGE to the image at all; all it does is tell the image that 39 pixels should look like one inch. I then saved the image (it was exactly the same size in terms of memory) and posted it to the fellow DM. He was delighted! Now, when he imported the image into WORD it filled up the entire page, instead of only half the page, and he knew it would print out at exactly the right scale. This is all PPI/DPI is.

2. To upload your images to the forums you don't need to worry about ddi. What you need to worry about is COMPRESSION. When you have an image of size 4000x3000 pixels and you export it as a .PNG or similar losless format it will measure c. 20mb, which is huge. You could reduce the size of your image in advance by 50% to say 2000x1500 pixels and then export it to make it smaller, but you would lose a lot of detail. So what you do is you export it in a LOSSY format - JPG is a very good one to use. Open that same 4000x3000 and this time export is as a .jpg. A dialogue will pop up offering a quality slider - I always leave it at default, usually 85-90%. This will export your image to a size of about 2-3mb, which is the right size of these forums. If you compare the 20mb exported PNG with the 2mb exported JPG I guarantee you will notice little or no difference in image quality. There is a significant difference obviously, but not one you need to worry about for this purpose - just make sure you keep the original GIMP file and only use the GIMP file to make changes to your document. The .jpg should just be used to post.

Hope that helps.

[Jalyha]

Jalyha, yeah its a bit confusing but I will try to help. The posters above explained much better than I can but here goes:

...
Hope that helps.

OMG IT WORKED!!

YAY!

Thanks so much, you're my new hero <3

Okay, done gushing. Time to make some REALLY GIANT MAPS

(Seriously, THIS is how I feel right now.