Printing our Products: Printers, Paper, PPI, and more 

At DSP, we strive to bring you the best quality products possible.  Not only because we care about you, but also because we use them to preserve our family history too!   As digital scrapbookers ourselves, we wouldn’t settle for sub-standard pages in our own books and you shouldn’t either.   Our products have been tested and print beautifully, but there are a few things to remember.  The quality of the prints you get from your printer depends on many variables such as printer brand and model, paper brand and type, ink brand, print settings, temperature and humidity, and even the coverage of colors on the images. 
Printers and Paper
There are many printers on the market that will give you great prints without blowing your budget.  Do a search for reviews and research the best printer for you.  Usually you will get the best results by using the same brand of printer, ink, and paper.  "Manufacturers recommend specific papers for their printers because the chemical properties of the receiver layers are formulated with the printer makers' own inks in mind.  The bottom line is, if you're looking to print photos or any kind of archival documentation, your best bet is to go with the manufacturer's paper recommendation after choosing the finish you want.  (PC Magazine, "Inside PC Labs: Becoming the Prince of Prints," by Glenn Menin, February 12, 2002)  But there are always exceptions and we recommend you experiment to find the best paper for your prints and your price range.
Resolution
You also need to consider the quality of the images you wish to print.  Resolution is measured in PPI (pixels per inch) and needs to be high enough for good quality prints.  72-96 PPI is commonly used for web graphics, but would not print well.  150-300 PPI is normally suggested for printing.  While many have suggested 300 PPI is the industry print standard, we would like to remind you that digital scrapping is a brand new industry and no standards have been set, until now.  While 300 PPI is commonly accepted by professional graphic designers, their images are also made to be color separated, made into printing plates, and printed on commercial presses.  Since we are printing images on ink jet printers, our optimal settings would naturally be different.  Months of research shows that the experts don’t even agree on the best image resolution for ink jet printers, but the accepted range is 150-250 PPI.  See the table below.

Recommended PPI for quality prints on ink jet printers:

The New Standard
DSP, the leader in this new industry, has set the new digital scrapbooking printing standard at 200 PPI.
All of our paper-style and graphic-style kits are created at 200 PPI.

Interesting to note, these suggested PPI values are for photographs, which have much more fine detail than digital scrapping products.  Our products are backgrounds or embellishments to use with your photographs, so you may use your photographs at any resolution you wish. Because 200 PPI is sufficient for photographs, it is certainly sufficient for digital scrapping kits.  And because we care about our hard drive space (and yours), we want to keep file sizes as low as possible without sacrificing print quality.
Practicality and Quality
As the leader in this industry, we need to make digital scrapping as practical as possible.  Many have given up using their preferred size of 12x12 because using 300 PPI at that size is too hard on their system.  Others have given up digital scrapping altogether because effects take so long to render or they don’t have the resources to handle file sizes that large.  The National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) said this, “Did you know that a 300-ppi Photoshop document is approximately twice the size of a 220-ppi Photoshop document?  Crazy but it's true. It's called “Adobe Math.”  We don't pretend to understand Adobe Math, but we do understand its effects on our Photoshop documents.  Make certain that you're using the appropriate resolution for your files. It's amazing how many people design Web graphics at 300 ppi (Yikes)!  Try these Adobe recommended Resolutions to give yourself and Photoshop CS a break.

This paragraph, from an article by Kleber Stephenson entitled, ‘Optimizing Adobe Photoshop CS for Windows XP,’ is reprinted by permission of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) (www.photoshopuser.com).  The article in its entirety is available to NAPP members at www.photoshopuser.com/napmem/whitepaper.html.
Test it for yourself
If you'd like to test different PPI values on your chosen printer/paper combination, please do so properly.  To create an image at 300 PPI and simply resize to 200 PPI is not a fair evaluation, as quality is lost in the resize.  You must create an image at 300 PPI, then create the same image at 200 PPI to do a proper comparison.  This makes sense since you would be creating layouts at 200 PPI, not creating them at 300 PPI and resizing them.  For instructions on creating the same image with the same settings at different resolutions, please visit http://www.dizteq.com/ppitest.html.  This test was designed by Sally Beacham, co-author of Paint Shop Pro 8 Zero to Hero, contributor to PSP Power, and teacher at LVS Online.
But what if I get published in a magazine?
This is a common question, since most of the magazines request the files in 300 PPI.  Fortunately, at the sizes the layouts are printed in the magazines or even higher quality books, 200 PPI is sufficient for those prints as well.  Team Digital has had personal experience with layouts created at 200 PPI in every scrapbook magazine and many books.  If the magazine requires 300 PPI, simply resize the layout to 300 PPI.  It will not actually increase the quality, but it will meet their specifications, and it was already at a good print quality, especially at the smaller size they will use.  As long as you create the layout at a decent size, 5x7 or higher, you don't need to worry. 
Final Resolution
So, DSP has set 200 PPI as the digital scrapbooking industry standard.  We know you’ll love the print quality as well as the smaller file sizes.  Quicker downloads, faster processing, and room for storing more kits!  We are experts in digital scrapping, not image printing, which is why we went to the image experts.  If you have any questions, please feel free to ask any of the experts below.

Happy Scrapping!
Team Digital

REFERENCES:

About.com Graphics Software
Getting Started Scanning... by Sue Chastain
…if you're using your printer's "normal" setting (300 dpi), your image needed to have at least 150 ppi. When using the higher quality printer settings (720 dpi and up), you can bring the PPI down to about 1/3 of the output resolution. That would be 240 ppi for your printer's 720 dpi setting.  Since writing this article photo printers have gotten much better--the dots are smaller and more compact--but still, you rarely need your image resolution to be higher than 240-300 ppi for inkjet printing.
http://graphicssoft.about.com/library/weekly/aa111799p4.htm

Epson
Photo Expert How To: Choose the Correct Scanning Resolution
The ideal image resolution range is from 250 to 300 dpi for EPSON Photo printers.  250/300 dpi is the best resolution for a 20 x 30 cm photo where the viewer distance is very close. In the case of a larger photo, we usually assume that the viewing distance is equal to the document size. This allows the image resolution to be smaller, which makes the data file smaller. For example, for a 60 X 80 cm photo, 200 dpi image resolution is acceptable.
http://www.photoexpert.epson.co.uk/UK/EXPERTISE/how_to_choose_scan_res.htm

HP Digital Photography center
10 quick tips for perfect prints
The standard unit of measurement for your picture's sharpness is dots per inch, or dpi. You should be sure that the electronic file of your photo is at least 240 dpi for smaller photos (4 x 6 and below) and 300 dpi for larger ones (5 x 7 and above).
http://h30015.www3.hp.com/hp_dpc/learn/quick_tips_10.asp

The Imaging Resource
Pixels, Dots, and Inches: How Big Can I Print It By Dave Etchells
…you can probably plan on useful PPI values of 120-150 for 720 dpi printers, and somewhere around 150-180 PPI for the 1440 ones. For the special "photo" printers, expect to be at the high end of these ranges, as those devices hold more detail in highlight areas as well as in the shadows, revealing more jaggies than their lesser brethren.
http://www.imaging-resource.com/TIPS/PRINT1/PRINT1A.HTM

Kodak
Picture quality settings
Resolution is also used to describe the quality of an inkjet print. Print resolution is expressed in ppi (pixels per inch). A resolution of 225 ppi is sufficient for making a high-quality inkjet print.
http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=9/36/340/428&pq-locale=en_US

Microsoft Home Magazine
Print your digital photos
Compare the cost and convenience of printing your digital photos from a printer or online photo store By Deena Waisberg
Photos are made up of digital dots (or pixels). You'll want a certain resolution (or dots per inch) to get a clear picture. George Perdicaris, digital media maker and instructor at Toronto Image Works, a school that teaches new-media computer training, recommends a minimum of 150 dots per inch (dpi) and ideally 200 dpi.
http://www.microsoft.com/canada/home/photos&music/2.0.26_printyourdigitalphotos.asp

The National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP)
The paragraph above, from an article by Kleber Stephenson entitled, ‘Optimizing Adobe Photoshop CS for Windows XP,’ is reprinted by permission of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) (www.photoshopuser.com).  The article in its entirety is available to NAPP members at www.photoshopuser.com/napmem/whitepaper.html.

PC Magazine
Prints and the Resolution by M David Stone
If you know the lpi rating for your ink jet (or laser, for that matter) printer at the printer resolution you plan to use, you can base the image resolution on the same rule of thumb, or else ignore the lpi and use either 150 ppi or 200 ppi as the optimum resolution, regardless of the printer resolution.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1790570,00.asp

PC World
The Big Pixel By Carla Thornton From the December 2001 issue of PC World Magazine
Anything above 150 ppi will allow good-quality photos on ink jet printers capable of 720 by 720 dots per inch or higher. (Note: Consumer ink jet printers don't make use of over-300-ppi digital images.)
http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,65170,pg,19,00.asp

PSP Power
Choosing a Digital Camera By Ron Lacey
The rule of thumb to achieve quality prints on an inkjet printer is that the print should be made at at least 150 pixels per inch (or PPI), with 200 to 300 for larger prints.
http://www.psppower.com/2002autumn/dpphoto.htm

ScanTips.com
So when IS there any advantage of 300 dpi? By Wayne Fulton
Photo quality inkjet printers want 250 to 300 ppi images (scaled to final size), but anything over 300 ppi is a real stretch of the imagination. Improved detail at up to 300 ppi is sometimes detectable on the sharpest images, and I often aim for 300 ppi. It's a very subtle difference, and even when not imaginary, it is lost altogether if viewed at arms length. 240 ppi is typically fine, and 150 ppi is enough for plain paper, or very large images, and sometimes for less sharp snapshot images too.
http://www.scantips.com/basics1e.html

Vivid Light Photography Online Photo Magazine
Introduction to Digital Photography by Frank Phillips
Resizing for Prints - 300 ppi The Magic Number
300 ppi has been the "magic number" when producing images for printing for some time now. You'll frequently see it in magazines and books. So where did this number come from?  The actual optimum print resolution will vary slightly from printer to printer. Since there are so many printers available, editors, writers, and digital printers needed a general "rule of thumb" number that would work for all printers when they were writing about digital printers. 300ppi provides enough density for the image that it will provide good results with any printer.
But as with anything technical there are those who would prefer to calculate the exact "best" resolution rather than use a rule of thumb. It's been argued that 240 ppi is actually a better figure to use for printers with a resolution of 1440 dpi and 2880 dpi as 240 is an exact multiple of those resolutions. In other words a 1440 dpi printer would use exactly 6 dots to create each pixel and a 2880 dpi printer would used exactly 12 dots to create that same pixel. Frankly you really can't see the difference between 300ppi and 240ppi in real world prints. The only advantage of using 240 ppi is that your image files will be slightly smaller.
http://www.vividlight.com/articles/3316.htm