How do you tell DPI? Is a 1024x768 wallpaper 300DPI?

[javeryh]

I'm looking for some art for my CPO.

[Felsir]

DPI is the dots-per-inch on paper. It doesn't really translate to an image on a monitor^[1]

An image width of 1024 will print roughly 3.4 inches wide:
1024 dots / 300 dots-per-inch = 3.41 inch

If you want an image printed at 300 DPI and 10 inch wide you would need a 3000 pixel imagewidth:
10 inch * 300 dots-per-inch = 30000 dots

Luckily most graphic software does this calculation for you, if you open Photoshop you can start with a new canvas of X inch wide and Y inch high, you set Z DPI and you will get a canvas of X*Z pixels x Y*Z pixels.

Note that while a lot of us use 300 DPI as a resolution factor, you can get great results with lower DPIs (150 for example) at a printshop.

[1] Test it yourself - measure the width of your monitor's screen, check your resolution and do the math. Since 100 pixels wide isn't the same on every monitor (depending on physical size and your Windows/Mac resolution setting) you can't really use DPI. In print however an inch is always an inch in size so dots-per-inch is a way to measure the sharpness/details of an image).

[RayB]

An image made for display on a monitor is 72 DPI.

[javeryh]

An image made for display on a monitor is 72 DPI.

Yikes.

[RayB]

Yeah, just start a new document, set the resolution to 300 DPI (dots per inch), then in the document size set those to your inches size.

And there you go. You now have a correctly sized blank document to start from. You could open your star image and paste it in, and then resize it. It will likely blur a bit when scaling it up, but as a background, blurry might look OK.

The really complicated part though is that your holes are already cut. Man, that's going to be hard if you want graphics specifically placed right where the buttons are, etc...

But turn on "Rulers" and that will help you place stuff correctly.

[javeryh]

Thanks for the advice.  The button cutouts do not matter to me because the background image will just be a random picture of outer space.  I'm looking for something like the night sky with the stars or something unless someone has a better idea for a plain generic CPO.  the artwork on the table is the most important part of my cabinet and I don't want to detract from it at all.  It should look good no matter how it is placed on the control panel, right?  I'm thinking of asking someone here to hook me up if it is easy enough and then just take the file to Kinko's and have it printed on vinyl...