What is the difference between pixels and points when using Photoshop Fonts? Pixels and Points are both units of measurement that are commonly used to measure the size of fonts when using Photoshop and other web-related applications.
1. Pixel – It is a measurement of how tall a font is in pixels which are visible on your computer screen. So, if a font is 12 pixels in height, that means it takes up 12 pixels on your screen from the top of the letter, to the bottom, which also includes the characters that have sections which are under the guide line, such as a “p” character.
Pixel’s are the preferred method to calculate font sizes in email signatures, because they need to be measured on LCD screens, rather than physically. Since computer and mobile devices all have LCD screens, it makes sense to use pixels as a unit of measurement.
2. Point – A point (pt) is equal to 0.352778 millimeters, 0.0138889 inches, or 1.333 pixels. Because millimeters and inches are measurements of physical items, they are not ideal to use with computer or mobile based applications because they dont always represent the correct size because of differences in screen resolution.
Some email clients, such as Outlook still use a point as a font size measurement when it comes to email signatures. This is rather annoying because most HTML email signatures are created using pixels for font sizes, because that is the web standard.