Pixels to Inches Conversion

When you have to take a printout of an image, you require its size in either pixels or inches. There are some software, like Adobe Photoshop or Corel Draw that do the pixels to inches conversion automatically. Read this article to know more about the conversion.

Here is some help for those of you who want to convert pixels to inches. There is a converter on the page, but I’ve also followed it up with an explanation of how to convert pixels to inches with the help of an equation. It’s a simple and useful equation to know in case you do not have a converter to rely on in times of urgency.

* Enter the DPI of the device for which you are calculating to get the result.

Pixel is…
…a unit of picture. It gives the measure of the distinct points present in an image. In short, a pixel indicates the number of points on a 2-dimensional grid and is represented by squares or dots. It is also the smallest element of an image.

Inch is…
… the universal unit of measurement of length. It is mostly used in United Kingdom, Canada and United States. It is denoted by in or a double prime (“). Sometimes inches is written after the desired number.

Converting pixels to inches needs to be done when you have to take a printout of an image, or when you have to scan the image. Also, if you enlarge a small pixel image, your image becomes blurred. In this case, you are changing the size of the image more than its resolution , i.e. dimensions of the image expressed in pixels. Hence, we should know the resolution of the image before we change its size.

The size of a printout of an image is measured in inches. As each pixel is varied in size, it is difficult to convert pixel to inch. Also, there is no specific pixels to inches ratio that tells us the pixel to inches conversion of a particular image. Hence, we use the term DPI (Dots Per Inch) or PPI (Pixels Per Inch). They are used to measure the size of each pixel by counting the number of dots (points) captured by the camera.

• DPI – It is a term used to know the printer resolution. It tells us how many dots of ink are present on the printed image.
• PPI – It is a term used to know the image resolution. It tells us the size of the image that a printer will print.

DPI is also sometimes called PPI.

This conversion is done with the help of a formula mentioned below

For Scanners : Pixels = (Inches) x (DPI)

For Printers : Inches = (Pixels) / (DPI)

Let us consider a small example which can help us understand the concept of pixels, inches, DPI and PPI.

This conversion is required mostly in printing and image scanning. Since, the image resolution is given in pixels and not inches, it’s necessary to use some formula to convert the image without altering its clarity.

If you take a file from Adobe Photoshop, photoshop adjusts the image to 72 dpi automatically. Hence we have also used 72 dpi and constructed a pixel to inches table that gives the values from 1″ to 10″.

* Using DPI as 72.