Pixel density

Pixels per inch (PPI) or pixels per centimeter (PPCM) is a measurement of the pixel density (resolution) of an electronic image device, such as a computer monitor or television display, or image digitizing device such as a camera or image scanner. Horizontal and vertical density are usually the same, as most devices have square pixels, but differ on devices that have non-square pixels.

PPI can also describe the resolution, in pixels, of an image file. The unit is not square centimeters—a 100×100 pixel image printed in a 1 cm square has a resolution of 100 pixels per centimeter (ppcm). Used this way, the measurement is meaningful when printing an image. It has become commonplace to refer to PPI as DPI, even though PPI refers to input resolution. Industry standard, good quality photographs usually require 300 pixels per inch, at 100% size, when printed onto coated paper stock, using a printing screen of 150 lines per inch (lpi). This delivers a quality factor of 2, which is optimum. The lowest acceptable quality factor is considered 1.5, which equates to printing a 225 ppi image using a 150 lpi screen onto coated paper.

Dots per inch

Dots per inch (DPI, or dpi) is a measure of spatial printing or video dot density, in particular the number of individual dots that can be placed in a line within the span of 1 inch (2.54 cm).

Monitors do not have dots, but do have pixels; the closely related concept for monitors and images is pixels per inch or PPI. Many resources, including the Android developer guide, will use the term DPI interchangeably with PPI, however.

DPI measurement in monitor resolution in pixels

Old CRT type video displays were almost universally rated in dot pitch, which refers to the spacing between the sub-pixel red, green and blue dots which made up the pixels themselves. Monitor manufacturers used the term "dot trio pitch", the measurement of the distance between the centers of adjacent groups of three dots/rectangles/squares on the CRT screen. Monitors commonly used dot pitches of 0.39, 0.33, 0.32, 0.29, 0.27, 0.25, or 0.22 millimetres [mm] (0.0087 in).

LCD monitors have a trio of sub pixels, which are more easily measured.