Dumb question of all time

[David Nelson]

I have wanted to know for quite some time but I was embarrassed to ask. Today, I have the nerve so here goes

when viewing a layout and I set inspector to inches, and I put the rules on the layout, and I set the page setup to portrait, it shows the page is 8 1/2 inches wide. And zoom is 100%. When I hold up a piece of standard paper which is 8 1/2 inches wide, it goes from 0 to 10 3/4 wide.

How am I supposed to understand this? When I preview, it looks right. But I design in layout mode and not preview. Why isn't the ruler accurate? Or is the 100% zoom which isn't accurate? Or do I need glasses?

[comment]

It's not a dumb question at all. In the past - on the Mac platform, at least - an inch on screen was equal to an inch on printed paper. For reasons which I will not go into here, this WYSIWYG approach was abandoned. Now it's purely a matter of screen resolution: since 1 inch is still 72 pixels, the more sharper your screen, the smaller the objects that are displayed on it.

I haven't noticed a size difference between Layout and Preview modes myself.

[David Nelson]

:laugh2:

Okay! This laptop is 1280 x 1064 and 32 bit. I meant in preview it looked right as far as relating to what it displays are the edges of the paper. Yes preview is same as you experience. Thank you for explaining. I appear to be an unnatural when it comes to reporting and choosing font size. If told to place a picture 1" from the left it is difficult to know where that really is on the layout if I can't trust the rulers. Are there any techniques to know where 1" will be? I don't want to set the page margin because I have other text and things which must be less than an inch.

Do I have to get my wife's cloth measuring tape and paste onto my monitor. :jester:

[LaRetta]

Hi David,

I never thought about it before. When is an inch an inch? When it's NOT on a computer! ROFLMAO!!

c'mon, what do graphic artists do? Not use FM? Ha hahh! oh, I'm enjoying this one! Question is not dumb. But very funny! I think you need measuring tape!

[comment]

This laptop is 1280 x 1064

That's not the whole story: you also need to account for the actual screen size. For example: 1280 pixels represent 1280/72 = 17.77 inch. Say your screen is 13 inch wide - then the reduction factor is 13:17.77 or about 73%.

I appear to be an unnatural when it comes to reporting and choosing font size.

Well, it was never perfect anyway, because 72 dpi is a very low resolution compared to print. So even with WYSIWYG you couldn't judge the font size properly because 9 point looked unreadable on screen, though it could have been perfectly acceptable in print.

I expect we are in a transition period anyway, because screens are getting dramatically sharper (witness the new Macs with "Retina" display). This will also necessitate rethinking the 72 pixels = 1 inch rule (otherwise a display of 200 dpi will squeeze a 8.5 inch wide page into a 3 inch wide strip).

[jbante]

David, when you set the rulers in layout mode to use inches, those inches don't represent inches on the computer screen, but they do represent inches on printed paper. When you're looking at the screen, trust the rulers on screen; when you're looking at a sheet of paper, trust the ruler in your hand. I'm assuming you're trying to print something to a specific physical size.

If you're trying to get something to display to a certain physical size on screen, there's always trial-and-error. The real problem you may run into is that screen resolution (pixels per inch) is far from standard these days. One inch worth of pixels on one display may be more or less on a different display, even before Retina displays arrived. There's no way to guarantee that something that displays as one inch on your screen will also be one inch on another.

[David Nelson]

I'm glad you liked my humor LaRetta. It just seemed so 'inhuman' and I am from old school where wysiwyg. It was just perplexing.

Thank you Comment and Jeremy for your great explanations. It is first time my boss has given me specific measurements on placement. And now I don't know if they want 1" on paper or 1" on screen. This will be placed in her lap for decision.

[David Jondreau]

As others have said, many screens don't display at 72 px. But it's easy to figure out what your resolution is...

If you know your screen diagonal as "d" then your screen's pixel depth is:

Sqrt ( Get ( ScreenHeight ) ^2 + Get ( ScreenWidth ) ^2) / d

My screen has a 13.3 diagonal giving me 128 pixels per inch when using the 1440x900 resolution setting.