72 or 96dpi?

Me and a colleague have been having a discussion on dpi, as he has a monitor which displays at 96dpi and when he looks at sites he/we have done with 72dpi graphics it looks really bad. Does anyone have any info/advice/comments on this as we're confused?

thanks

work at 84 =]

damn I should know this
I have studied this...but my memorie...hmm...
Well I always go with 96dpi as normal...
Then 300 dpi if you want something printed...but this is just how I do it...Not sure if I'm following the rules with this...

The general rule is that on a Mac you work with 72ppi and on a PC you run 96ppi. I however use 72ppi on my PC and don't see any problems.

For print, 300 is a good number, but it again depends on a lot of factors. Newspapers only run at around 150dpi.

Oh yeah. Yes it is "ppi" (pixels per inch)

Here is an exerpt from the book, Photoshop 7 Bible on Size versus Resolution.

If you haven't already guessed, the term image size describes the physical dimensions of an image. Resolution is the number of pixels per linear inch in the final printed image. ... If the resolution of an image is 72 ppi-that is, pixels per inch - you get 5,184 pixels per square inch (72 pixels wide x 72 pixels tall = 5,184).

Hope this helps.

No offense, Sharif, but thats not really answering the question at all.

A couple links that might be useful:
http://www.desilva.biz/grafix/dpi.html
http://www.google.ca/search?q=cache:t-xX34IcpsEJ:nilbs.com/techbabl/dpi_woes.htm+monitor+resolution+72+96+dpi&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
http://www.nmc.edu/support/web/faqs/19.html

tom

that's just weird. in like 6 years (wow, i'm old) of designing i've never done anything for screen at a res other than 72ppi.

chris

I, too, have never come across a monitor that doesn't display at 72ppi. Is it an O/S thing, or is it purely hardware?

I'm with Fig, cuz I don't know about being out of 72ppi for web work. Hmmm, I just figured it was the standard res to go with.

trhaynes, those are some good sites you posted. And after just looking at the first link, and reading that the monitor is "resolution blind" my guess is that the only way for clarity is knowing how to sharpen an image. Would that be right?

Cheer!

ditto. I don't buy the mac / PC rumor, either.

I've never in my life made or seen a 96 ppi image (even though I still say "dpi" ) 11 years now, I've never needed one. Probably never will.

hope that helps.