Alan, it’s a default value for that particular field, but it’s not really a problem. Here’s why:
When you open an image from a digital camera in Elements, it becomes a matrix of pixels, so many across by so many high. For a 3 megapixel camera, those dimensions might be 2000 pixels by 1500 pixels. That’s what Elements knows about your image, and it’s depicted in the Pixel Dimensions portion of the dialog box found by doing Image<Resize<Image Size. The rest of that dialog box does some simple math to determine what the linear dimensions of that image would be at various ppi (pixels per inch) resolutions. At the default of 72 ppi, the Document Size would be something like 27.78 inches by 20.83 inches. What does this mean? Nothing, unless you wanted to print the image.
Here comes the important part; you definitely do want to have 200 ppi to 300 ppi when you print your image, and you’d like to achieve that without having to resample, which is adding calculated pixels to the image. The document size box allows you to experiment with different sizes and/or ppi to achieve the desired effect. Being careful to make certain that the Constrain Proportions box is checked and the Resample box is UNCHECKED, you can insert new values for the ppi or one of the linear dimensions; the others will be calculated. For instance, if I decided I wanted to print my 2000 pixel by 1500 pixel image at 300 ppi (most often recommended value, although lower values work pretty well), I would insert 300 ppi in place of the 72 ppi; you would observe that the linear dimensions would change to something around
6.67 inches by 5 inches. The box tells you that if you want 300 ppi for
this particular image, you will get a printed picture that’s 6.67 inches by 5 inches.
That’s the core of it; there’s more to it, but please see if that makes sense first.
Chuck
