Determining the size that you need for your project

- Depending upon your delivery format, you might need to create different types of files. For example, are you using Microsoft Word to create a flyer that someone is going to view just on their computer in a web browser or is it meant to be printed? Are you designing a slide presentation for viewing on a high definition television or a 4K television? Well knowing the delivery requirements are pretty important. There's a common dialogue that you'll run into in many applications in office. This for example is the page setup dialog or PowerPoint for Mac, and I can choose how to slide is sized for the screen. In this case, it is measuring in inches which may seem confusing, but remember what happened here is it's using the historical measurements of pixel count. So for example, if I take that 7 1/2 inches and multiply it by the standard resolution used by office software for Microsoft at 96 pixel per inch. I get a height of 722 and that width of 13 1/3 by 96 gives you a width of 1280. Well 1280 by 720 is a standard size for a high definition television. Now there are pop up lists to make it's a bit easier and remember that you can actually create printed documents inside a tool like PowerPoint so people may choose different sizes. When designing for the screen, typically speaking your graphics are going to be somewhere between 72 to 96 pixels per inch. If you're going to be delivering 16 by 9 for something like a television screen or mini computer displays, these are some of the common sizes. You'll see them from smaller to larger. These are the two flavors of HD 720P and 1080p as well as the newer ultra high definition, which is a height of 2160. Microsoft PowerPoint will also have two pop up presets. On screen show preset which is going to use a lower quality setting and a wide screen preset which really is just going to match that 1280 by 720 size. On the other hand, you might be using a slightly different aspect ratio. Mini computer displays are using a 16 by 10 aspect ratio whereas televisions tend to use 16 by 9. The world has gotten a bit confusing these days between projectors and televisions being hung in conference rooms versus computer displays. But you may still encounter 16 by 10. Here are some of those typical sizes that you'll run into. Of course you might need to deliver a legacy style presentation that's going to be size for 4 by 3. And here are the typical sizes that you'll encounter. This is far less more commonly used these days though so I'd be very certain that you confirm that the presentation is supposed to be delivered in the 4 by 3 aspect ratio. Let's jump into Microsoft PowerPoint for a moment so that I can show you where this is accessed. When you create a document or a presentation and you chose your template. You'll be presented with the ability to address the size. You go to the design tab and choose slide size. You'll see that it gives you two simple choices a 4 by 3 and widescreen of 16 by 9, but if you click the custom menu, you'll be able to access far more options. Now the ability to do a landscape ratios is far more common than making slides but you do have control over that. You'll see here as well from the pop up list that you can easily choose between different choices. And for example, if you knew you're going to be connected to an ultra high-definition display. You can choose custom and simply type in the size that you need. Now in this case, it might seem a little confusing. What resolution should I use? Well if we take a 3840 number and divide by 96, I get a width of 40 inches, and if I did the 2160 number for the height and divide by 96, I get a height of 22 1/2 inches. When I click okay, PowerPoint is now set to the New Dimensions. Now in the world of print. The resolution settings are going to vary a bit. We're going to have two variables here. Unlike slides where you are typically dealing with a resolution of about 96 pixels per inch. Printed documents can have much more variance as well as variance in the physical size of the printed page. When printing you want to think about the pixels per inch count first. 96 pixels per inch is going to be recommended when delivering something for email only. 150 pixels per inch is the bare minimum for prints. It's labeled as on screen and it works well for many devices like tablets but it's the bare minimum for a printed image. 220 is the standard resolution for print and 300 is the most common one you'll hear referenced in the industry. Although Microsoft recommends 330 for what they be referred to as HD printing. There is a newer option as well called high fidelity, which will attempt to minimize the compression in the file. It will only compress the file if it gets bigger than the canvas and it will make adjustments to make sure the file fits inside of the document, but applies minimal shrinking to the image and will discard very little data. Let's jump into Microsoft Word for moment and I'll show you where you can access these same settings. From the file tab, let's make a new document and now we can go to the layout tab. If I click size, you'll see many different presets loaded. These are going to help you deliver to a wide range of printed formats from around the world. You also can go to more paper sizes. This is where you could enter the target width and height. Now we'll talk about resolution in a moment but you see here that we can definitely target the delivery size to match our output device. If you need to change the resolution settings that are used, go to file and choose options. Click the advanced tab and let's scroll down to image size and quality. You'll see here the ability to change the default resolution. This allows you to choose from those precepts we recommended earlier. I'd advocate sticking with high fidelity if you are using a newer version of the application, which will keep the maximum quality for as long as possible. Otherwise consider working at 330 pixels per inch for better results. This is going to set it for this particular document only. If you want, you do have the ability to assign it to any open documents or for all new documents going forward. I'm going to set this to the high fidelity option and tell it to apply to all new documents in the future. When I click okay, now when I generate a new document. It will use the high fidelity resolution settings for any images that I insert.