How to Set DPI for Printing

Video Transcript

"Hello, my name is Eric White, and we're going to be talking about how to set the DPI setting on a printer. For the demonstration today, we're using an HP D4260 printer. Now, the DPI setting is a fancy way of saying quality. So what we're going to do is we're going to go into Printers and Faxes, find our Printer, right-click it, and then you're going to pull up the properties. So DPI stands for dots per inch. The higher the DPI, the more dots you have within an inch, so the better the quality, the more detailed you're able to print. Okay. Here are my printer properties. I'm going to go down here. I'm going to click on the printing preferences button. And then I'm going to go to the features. You've got your basic options. There's the paper type. Right here: print quality. Pretty much your DPI. I'm going to adjust it. Now, notice that the very bottom -- the top setting -- is maximum DPI, and this particular printer has a maximum DPI of 1,200 DPI. So if I set this to maximum DPI, I'm going to get the absolute best detailed picture possible by this printer. Now, word of warning, if you print everything on maximum DPI, you're going to go through your ink much faster because the more dots per inch, the more ink per inch. So bear that in mind when you're printing. And that's how you set the DPI on your printer."