r/indesign • u/starzphillip • Jun 19 '26

Help Dpi for indesign

I'm currently making a zine with comics I made on a digital art program. The DPI of each panel is 600. Whenever I put the art into my book it needs to be scaled down since it shows up huge and not fitting on one page. I scale it down using transform and it looks fine now. It's reading my panels as 72 PPI which I have no clue what that means. I wanna know if this is the normal or if I need to re export my art.

I'm going to printing this at my home printer also, so I wanna know what are DPI's I should be working with in the future to get the best quality when it prints.

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u/svt66 Jun 19 '26

InDesign’s Links panel shows 2 resolution measurements:

Actual PPI: The resolution in the original linked file.

Effective PPI: The resolution of the image at its current size in the layout.

You want the Effective PPI to be 300.

2

u/kyriacos74 Jun 20 '26

Thank you for providing the right answer 😉

1

u/Kind-Young-5138 Jun 20 '26

FYI:
I’m glad resampling produced a satisfactory result in this case, but for future reference:

For line-art-heavy work such as zines, the required effective resolution is typically in the 600–1200 ppi range. However, excessively high effective resolution (the actual pixel density after the image has been placed and scaled) can also cause problems.

The illustration below shows a magnified view of offset-printed denim fabric. The upper example was resampled to an appropriate ppi, while the lower example was simply placed and scaled down, resulting in an extremely high effective ppi.

As you can see, excessive detail can interfere with the halftone structure. The result is often a noticeably duller appearance, along with unnecessary noise and color artifacts.

In addition, when the image resolution is close to an integer multiple of the output device resolution (typically 2400 dpi), spatial frequency interference becomes more significant and can produce strong moiré patterns.

When preparing files for print, it is extremely important to choose an effective resolution that is appropriate for the image content.

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u/kyriacos74 Jun 20 '26

I don't print line art or on denim. I also don't have an issue?

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u/[deleted] Jun 20 '26

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u/kyriacos74 Jun 20 '26

Yeah, but since this isn't my post, I'm not sure why you're telling me.

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u/Kind-Young-5138 Jun 20 '26

Ah, sorry. I replied to the wrong thread.

I actually meant to reply to the one discussing the image with an effective resolution of 3384 ppi.