Bruce Dayton wrote: > That is a deceiving figure. While the single dot resolution is that > high, the real "dithered" dot to make up the right color is not that > high of resolution - somewhere between 200-400 dpi in a traditional > sense. It takes up many dots together of one or more of the ink > colors to create the correct color for a given dot.
Bruce, What you're talking about here is the difference between "dots per inch" (dpi) and "pixels per inch" (ppi). There is another figure called "lines per inch" (lpi) but that doesn't really apply in this case. In a continuous-tone system, there is one dot per pixel. The intensity of each colour in the pixel can be directly controlled. Some printers can do this, but these tend to be expensive. When halftoning, as inkjet printers do, there are many dots per pixel. This is because the printer cannot change the intensity of the ink itself, so it creates shades by controlling the density of the dots within a pixel. Just like film. Hence the incredibly high dpi numbers which have no direct relation to the actual pixel count. Cheers, - Dave http://www.digistar.com/~dmann/
