DPI & PPI
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Definition
DPI (dots per inch) measures print output resolution; PPI (pixels per inch) measures screen display resolution—both describe spatial density of image elements.
Explanation
Print at 300 DPI is considered photo quality; newspaper print runs at 85–150 DPI. Apple coined 'Retina display' for screens above ~300 PPI, where individual pixels become imperceptible at normal viewing distance. The iPhone 15 Pro screen is 460 PPI. Confusingly, 'DPI' is widely misused to mean PPI in software settings—they are conceptually distinct but numerically interchangeable in digital-to-print workflows.
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RELATED TERMS
Bit and Byte
A bit is the smallest unit of digital information, representing a 0 or 1; a byte is a group of 8 bits, capable of representing 256 distinct values.
Binary Prefix
Binary prefixes (KiB, MiB, GiB) denote powers of 1024, in contrast to metric SI prefixes (KB, MB, GB) which denote powers of 1000.
Bandwidth
Bandwidth is the maximum data transfer capacity of a communication channel, typically measured in bits per second (bps, Mbps, Gbps).
Latency
Latency is the time delay between a data packet being sent from a source and received at its destination, typically measured in milliseconds (ms).
Throughput
Throughput is the actual rate at which data is successfully transferred over a network or system in a given time period, measured in bits or bytes per second.