To satisfy your curiosity, I'm not actually running it, but it's an annual calendar competition for an animal rescue group. All entries are either dogs which have been adopted or fostered through this group. Although a relatively small group, it is a nationwide organization and everyone involved is a volunteer-- no paid staff. Although it's a small printing (approx. 500 calendars), it's the group's largest fundraiser of the year.
As an "amateur," self-taught designer, I jumped at the opportunity when I was asked to design next year's calendar, as I have been wanting to redesign it since I became involved with the group four years ago. As I'm not really in a situation to make financial contributions to the group-- what better way to support a cause so near and dear to my heart than by volunteering my skills?
While I understand that it's all about the dogs, I do want to make this the best looking and highest quality calendar the organization has produced. I'm not very confident that what looks okay on the screen won't look crappy when it's professionally printed. Yes, it may be ok for a calendar that's only going to be seen by a small group of people interested more in the dogs than in the resolution of the pictures, but it might not be ok for me.
In any event, as an amateur with a limited understanding of technical details, I've wondered if there were a simple way to tell an image's original resolution, whether maybe there were some kind of "metadata" attached to the file in the same way the camera info is attached. This seemed an opportune moment to investigate further.
The resolution requirement is to ensure we have beautiful, high quality pictures, not just to "fool" the printer. It's easier to tell someone you can't accept the photo because it was initially taken at too low a resolution than by telling them it just doesn't look good. I guess I have to just leave that up to the voters.
Thanks again for your response.