I have a new Olympus P-400 DyeSublimation Printer that prints at 7.7 megapixel / 16.7 million colors- to achive the BEST print quality what should I render at??? Thanks greatly

Perhaps Iwas unclear.. If i render at say 4000x4000 with 300 dpi is there a difference from say 4000x4000 at 1200 dpi ???? and how high can poser effectively render the dpi. I guess I want to render the largest image at the highest dpi available. Since the printer is a dye-sub it prints very differently than a laser printer. I rendered at a dpi of 1200 and look great printed. In short I'm asking at the maximum size 4090 in poser what the effective max of dpi. No the printer is not large at all just slightly bigger than a hp desktop laser jet printer. And priced right for its capability. I paid just under 500.00 US really a great price when you consider a dye-sub just 8 year ago was 15,000 US. Heres a link to the wed site http://www.olympusamerica.com/cpg_section/cpg_product_lobbypage.asp?l=1&bc=23&p=19&product=632 Thanks for you input

I personally would recommend 600 dpi at size for printing; when I worked in pre-press that was what we required of our customers when they were supplying their own art, and it always looked crisp :-)

Render for the printer you intend to use. If the largest print your printer can make is 8x14 inches and the printers resolution is 300ppi then the largest render you would need to do is a 8x14 inches at 300ppi. Which is a hugh render for Poser.(28.9mb to be exact!)

"4000x4000 with 300 dpi" = 13 1/3 inches square "4000x4000 at 1200 dpi" = 3 1/3 inches square Render at a sufficient size in pixels to give the size of output you want at the resolution your printer supports, you can set the resolution in Poser or in your image editor - it's just an output scale factor, nothing to do with image quality as such. For a high end item like a dye-sub the manual or the manufacturer's website should recommend values - if it can put 24bit colour on each dot (which lasers and inkjets can't) then you could go up to the physical DPI; you'll probably get best results with a value that is a divisor of that.

i thought the max resoultion poser could render was 300 ppi? so if that is true, what is the point of printing @ a resolution greater than that besides wasting ink?

If Poser won't render over 300ppi just make your image larger and then change the resolution in your image editor without resampling. However 300ppi is probably high enough for most purposes (printed pictures are usually that or even under except for very fancy stuff, fashion plates say). Printing at a higher dpi than the image's ppi lets the printer use more than one dot to get the colour right, since most devices can't produce anything approaching 16m colours with one dot.