Can we improve screenshot DPI

Given , Andy Burns
wrote:

Bram van den Heuvel wrote:

Is there any way to snap a screenshot at better resolution than 96 DPI?

Buy a larger monitor and scale it in GIMP :-)

It's clear from the responses that I was operating under the wrong
assumption how a screenshot gets its resolution.

I thought the resolution of the screen & driver was what determined the
resolution of the screenshot.

If it's not the resolution of the screen & driver, what does determine the
resolution of the Win+PrtScrn PNG screenshot then?

"Bram van den Heuvel" wrote

| I confirm the dots per inch with Microsoft Paint "File Properties"
| Resolution = 96 DPI
|

That means nothing. DPI only matters if you want to print.
If it's 300px wide that will probably be about 3 inches onscreen
(though that's not an exact 1-to-1 relationship), but it's only
1 inch on a printer that prints 300 DPI. You can switch the DPI
in IrfanView, but it won't have any effect on the image.

Looking at it another way: You have a picture of an apple
that's 100px square at 96 DPI. You change the resolution
to 300 DPI. It still shows about 1 inch onscreen and it
still prints about 1/3 inch with 300 DPI printing. That's
because the image is always 100 pixels square. DPI is only
the calculation of how those pixels fit into a display medium.
It means nothing out of context.

If your screen is, say, 1600x900px then you can take a
screenshot 1600x900 pixels. There are only that many pixels
displaying, so there's no data to increase the resolution. If
you then switch the display to be, say, 2700px wide, you'll
get more pixels onscreen, but the objects will be smaller!
A 32x32 icon doesn't get more pixels when you increase
monitor resolution. It only has 32x32 pixels of data, no matter
what you do.

So you need to think of it in terms of pixels. The more
pixels, the more data, the more you can enlarge. Which is
why megapixels is so important with cameras. If you want
to get minimal quality print of a photo you need at least
300 pixels for every inch. Thus, if you want to print a
5x7 photo at lowest usable quality, you'll need 1500 x
2100 pixels in the image, or 3+ megapixels. If you want to
print it at 600 DPI you'll need an image 3000x4200px, which
is over 12 megapixels. You can always enlarge the 1500x2100
image, but there's no way to get more data. The enlarging
is just a mathematical formula that adds pixels while guessing
at what color they should be.

On Aug 23, 2017, Bram van den Heuvel wrote
(in article ):

, Andy Burns
wrote:

Bram van den Heuvel wrote:

Is there any way to snap a screenshot at better resolution than 96 DPI?

Buy a larger monitor and scale it in GIMP :-)

It's clear from the responses that I was operating under the wrong
assumption how a screenshot gets its resolution.

I thought the resolution of the screen & driver was what determined the
resolution of the screenshot.

....and the resolution, and manner of publication of the original
image/document.

If it's not the resolution of the screen & driver, what does determine the
resolution of the Win+PrtScrn PNG screenshot then?

What is the source of the display image you are trying to capture?
Is it a part of a web page, is it a screen capture of a document such as a
PDF, WP, or spreadsheet doc?

Ultimately you are limited by the native resolution of your display, the
quality of the original, and the intent of the creator of the published
image/document. So I will ask once again; what is your purpose for these
higher resolution screenshots, why do you need the higher resolution?

--

Regards,
Savageduck

"Savageduck" wrote

| So I will ask once again; what is your purpose for these
| higher resolution screenshots, why do you need the higher resolution?
|

He wants better screenshots. Isn't that
enough reason? The problem seems to be
that he doesn't understand that he's not
taking a picture of something, but is rather
just copying the pixels displayed onscreen.

On Aug 23, 2017, Mayayana wrote
(in article ):

wrote

So I will ask once again; what is your purpose for these
higher resolution screenshots, why do you need the higher resolution?

He wants better screenshots. Isn't that
enough reason? The problem seems to be
that he doesn't understand that he's not
taking a picture of something, but is rather
just copying the pixels displayed onscreen.

Obviously the starting point is to have a higher resolution display, and the
something he is trying to capture should not be postage stamp size.

--

Regards,
Savageduck

On 23/08/2017 14:57, Savageduck wrote:
On Aug 23, 2017, Mayayana wrote
(in article ):

wrote

So I will ask once again; what is your purpose for these
higher resolution screenshots, why do you need the higher resolution?

He wants better screenshots. Isn't that
enough reason? The problem seems to be
that he doesn't understand that he's not
taking a picture of something, but is rather
just copying the pixels displayed onscreen.

Obviously the starting point is to have a higher resolution display, and the
something he is trying to capture should not be postage stamp size.

Can I change this format?

https://youtu.be/uRucAkHZIp4

In article , Bram van den Heuvel
wrote:

If it's not the resolution of the screen & driver, what does determine the
resolution of the Win+PrtScrn PNG screenshot then?

the number of pixels

In article , David B.
wrote:

So I will ask once again; what is your purpose for these
higher resolution screenshots, why do you need the higher resolution?

He wants better screenshots. Isn't that
enough reason? The problem seems to be
that he doesn't understand that he's not
taking a picture of something, but is rather
just copying the pixels displayed onscreen.

Obviously the starting point is to have a higher resolution display, and the
something he is trying to capture should not be postage stamp size.

Can I change this format?

https://youtu.be/uRucAkHZIp4

wtf does that have to do with screenshots?

"Savageduck" wrote

| Obviously the starting point is to have a higher resolution display, and
the
| something he is trying to capture should not be postage stamp size.
|

Nothing will matter. The image is already set.
Higher res display just means the image will be
smaller. Buttons, icons, program windows, etc
are sent to the screen with pixel sizes. If he
takes a screenshot of, say, a 600px square
window with 32x32px menu buttons, that's the
pixels he can capture with a screenshot. He
can then enlarge, enhance, or do whatever he
likes, but he can't get more pixel data.
He seems to be misunderstanding the concept,
thinking that he's taking a picture of an object --
the monitor -- and that the quality is limited only
by the capacity of the "camera". But with a
screenshot the picture is already taken. The
screenshot only copies the pixels.

Given news wrote:

He wants better screenshots. Isn't that
enough reason? The problem seems to be
that he doesn't understand that he's not
taking a picture of something, but is rather
just copying the pixels displayed onscreen.

I appreciate that you're helpful since some of the others don't even seem
to understand the question where they think printing is involved or where
they think it matters what you're screenshotting.

The question is just one of what determines resolution of any given
screenshot.

Specifically, how do I increase the number of pixels copied off the screen?

Someone asked "what" I'm taking a screenshot of, where I can't imagine that
his question has any technical merit since it shouldn't matter what you're
taking a screenshot of since the screen is displaying it - so you can't do
better than the screen, right?

Someone else also mentioned printing, which again has no bearing on the
question since the question is only about how to increase the resolution of
the captured screenshot.

Let's say I have a current screenshot resolution of X.
And let's say I want to double that resolution to 2X.

How can a person do that?

They're not going to double their resolution by what they're looking at.
They're not going to double their resolution by printing it.

How can you double the resolution of a screenshot?

Do you change a software driver?
Do you double your screen size?
Do you double your memory?

What determines the resolution of any given screenshot on your own screen?