What is PPI in an Image or Screen?
PPI stands for pixels per inch: the amount of pixels of a digital image or physical screen that occupy 1 inch of physical space. Also called pixel density. The term means fundamentally the same thing as DPI.
- See DPI (dots per inch) for more information about PPI.
What is the Difference Between DPI and PPI?
A key difference is that DPI tends to be used for printing (because "dots" are printed), while PPI is used for screens (because there are physical pixels on the screen). Notably, the standard way to display pixels on screens is to use multiple colored LEDs (light-emitting diodes) for each pixel. This means a single pixel can have 1 red, 1 green, and 1 blue LED to display the pixel's RGB color. It can be confusing then to use DPI, as a "dot" could be interpreted as a single LED instead of one whole pixel1.
What is Pixel Pitch?
A similar term is pixel pitch, which refers to the distance between the middle points of two pixels on a screen.
Reducing the distance between pixels (pixel pitch) without changing the screen size of the LCD increases the ppi [...]
https://www.eizo.co.uk/knowledge/monitor-expertise/understanding-pixel-density/ (accessed 2024-07-21)
References
- https://www.daktronics.com/blog/lets-get-technical-pixel-density-defined (accessed 2024-07-21) ↩︎
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