Flyers · Glossary

A4 size in pixels at 300 DPI, 150 DPI and 72 DPI

A4 is 210 by 297 millimetres, which is 2480 by 3508 pixels at 300 DPI, 1240 by 1754 at 150 DPI and 595 by 842 at 72 DPI. Use 300 DPI for print held in the hand, 150 DPI for draft prints and large screens, and 72 or 96 DPI only for files that will be viewed on screen.

The same A4 page can be 595 pixels wide or 2480 pixels wide, and both are correct; the DPI decides which. Choosing it is a question of where the page ends up, a print shop, an office printer or a screen, not of which number is best.

Indunil Asanka · Co-founder

4 min read · Published 21 October 2026

A4 in pixels at each resolution
Resolution	Portrait pixels	Megapixels	What it is for
72 DPI	595 x 842	0.5	old screen convention, PDF page points
96 DPI	794 x 1123	0.9	CSS reference pixel, web previews
150 DPI	1240 x 1754	2.2	draft prints, large screens, email attachments
200 DPI	1654 x 2339	3.9	office prints of photos
300 DPI	2480 x 3508	8.7	professional print held in the hand
600 DPI	4961 x 7016	34.8	fine line art, scans for archiving
Landscape	swap width and height

Why the same page has several pixel sizes

ISO 216 defines A4 as 210 by 297 millimetres, 8.27 by 11.69 inches. Pixels only exist once a density is chosen: multiply each side in inches by the dots per inch. At 300 DPI that is 2480 by 3508; at 72 DPI it is 595 by 842. The 595 by 842 figure is also the size of an A4 page in PDF points, since one point is a seventy second of an inch, which is why it appears so often in software. The W3C's CSS specification fixes one CSS inch at 96 pixels, giving the 794 by 1123 size web tools use.

72 against 300 DPI

72 DPI is a habit from early Mac screens and has nothing to do with print quality today. An A4 image of 595 by 842 pixels looks fine as a thumbnail but prints blocky, with jagged text and soft photos. 300 DPI matches what the eye can resolve on a page held at reading distance, so text edges look clean and photos look continuous. Between them, 150 DPI is often enough for an office printout or a poster read from further away, at a quarter of the file weight of 300.

Screens complicate the picture

On screens, DPI settings in a file are mostly ignored; what matters is the pixel count and the device's own scaling. MDN describes the device pixel ratio, the number of physical pixels per CSS pixel: 2 or 3 on most phones and many laptops. An A4 preview at 794 by 1123 CSS pixels therefore needs 1588 by 2246 real pixels to look sharp on a ratio 2 screen. For a PDF that will be read on screen and sometimes printed, 150 to 200 DPI images are a good compromise.

Common mistakes

The first is setting the DPI field to 300 without changing the pixels, which only changes a label; a 595 by 842 image tagged 300 DPI prints as a tiny 2 by 3 inch picture or is stretched to soft A4. The second is exporting every A4 PDF at 600 DPI and producing email attachments of tens of megabytes. The third is scanning documents at 72 DPI, which makes small print unreadable. The fourth is mixing a sharp 300 DPI page with low resolution logos pasted from a website.

A4 in the flyer editor

A4 portrait and A4 landscape are two of the flyer editor's eight canvas sizes. The working canvas is 1240 by 1754 pixels, A4 at 150 DPI, and every export is captured at twice that, 2480 by 3508 pixels, which is A4 at 300 DPI. PNG and JPG export the active page and PDF exports every page; PDF pages are images, so their text is not selectable, and there is no bleed, crop marks or CMYK. Pick A4 Portrait under Format in the generator to start there. The blank PNG above is 2480 by 3508, the same 300 DPI size.

Questions people ask

Is 150 DPI good enough for printing A4?

For office printouts, internal documents and posters read from a distance, usually yes. For flyers, brochures and anything with small text or detailed photos that people hold close, 300 DPI is noticeably cleaner. Vector text in a PDF prints sharp at any setting; the DPI matters for images.

What is A4 in pixels for a website?

Web tools usually use 96 pixels per CSS inch, which makes A4 794 by 1123 CSS pixels. On high density screens the browser uses two or three device pixels per CSS pixel, so supply images at two times that size if they must look crisp.

How do I change an image to 300 DPI?

Resample it to the pixel size A4 needs at 300 DPI, 2480 by 3508, in an image editor or resizer. Changing only the DPI value without resampling does not add detail. Enlarging a small image adds pixels but not sharpness, so start from the largest original available.

Is 72 DPI bad?

Not for screens. Screens show pixels directly, so a 72 DPI tag on a web image changes nothing. It becomes a problem only when the image is printed, because the low pixel count is spread over the page. Check pixels, not the DPI label, when an image will be printed.

What DPI should I scan A4 documents at?

300 DPI is the usual choice for text documents, giving clear small print and searchable OCR results. Photos and artwork benefit from 600 DPI if they will be enlarged or archived. 150 DPI works for quick reference copies where file size matters more than detail.

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Sources

Written and checked by the OneCraft team. Last checked 21 October 2026.