--- title: This Is the World's Smallest Color Image Ever Printed description: Guinness World Records confirmed it canonical: https://time.com/4152640/worlds-smallest-colored-image/ author: NBC News article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-12-16T22:15:47.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T08:02:56.280Z og:title: This Is the World's Smallest Color Image Ever Printed og:description: Guinness World Records confirmed it og:url: https://time.com/4152640/worlds-smallest-colored-image/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcf9d4a2f2395e798/698875c1f887dc98c0e93c72/image-imageformat-fullwidth-1749112008.png?branch=production&width=414&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 414 og:image:height: 233 og:image:alt: image.imageformat.fullwidth.1749112008 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: This Is the World's Smallest Color Image Ever Printed twitter:description: Guinness World Records confirmed it twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcf9d4a2f2395e798/698875c1f887dc98c0e93c72/image-imageformat-fullwidth-1749112008.png?branch=production&width=414&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # This Is the World's Smallest Color Image Ever Printed > Sponsored content. 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Dubai World Record Eagle Flight_ by [Devin Coldewey / NBC News](https://time.com/author/nbc-news/) ## Devin Coldewey / NBC News Dec 16, 2015 10:15 PM UTC  The tiniest inkjet color picture of the world is as small as the cross-sectional area of a human hair or a single pixel of a retina display. The tiniest inkjet color picture of the world is as small as the cross-sectional area of a human hair or a single pixel of a retina display. Scrona/ETH Zurich by [Devin Coldewey / NBC News](https://time.com/author/nbc-news/) ## Devin Coldewey / NBC News Dec 16, 2015 10:15 PM UTC Normally when you take a great shot, you want to print it nice and large. Not the nanotechnologists at Swiss university ETH Zurich, though: They just [set the record for smallest inkjet-printed color image in the world](https://www.ethz.ch/en/news-and-events/eth-news/news/2015/12/tiniest-color-picture-ever-printed.html). At about 80-by-115 micrometers, the picture — of clownfishes loitering around a sea anemone — would comfortably fit on a cross-section of a human hair. But the researchers didn’t use ordinary ink; this image is printed with “quantum dots,” tiny particles that emit light of different colors depending on their size. Smaller dots are blue, large ones are red, and those in-between are green or… [Read the rest of the story from our partners at NBC News](http://www.nbcnews.com/tech/innovation/worlds-smallest-color-printed-image-uses-nanodots-fits-hair-n481271?cid=par-time-article%5F20141002) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4152640/worlds-smallest-colored-image/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4152640/worlds-smallest-colored-image/"},"headline":"This Is the World's Smallest Color Image Ever Printed","datePublished":"2015-12-16T22:15:47.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T08:02:56.280Z","description":"Guinness World Records confirmed it","url":"https://time.com/4152640/worlds-smallest-colored-image/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Technology","Switzerland","guinness world records"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcf9d4a2f2395e798/698875c1f887dc98c0e93c72/image-imageformat-fullwidth-1749112008.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Devin Coldewey / NBC News"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltcf9d4a2f2395e798/698875c1f887dc98c0e93c72/image-imageformat-fullwidth-1749112008.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"image.imageformat.fullwidth.1749112008","caption":"The tiniest inkjet color picture of the world is as small as the cross-sectional area of a human hair or a single pixel of a retina display.","creditText":"Scrona/ETH Zurich","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4152640/worlds-smallest-colored-image/","name":"This Is the World's Smallest Color Image Ever Printed"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"Dubai World Record Eagle Flight","description":"Dubai World Record Eagle Flight","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/UvzEMmAj/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2015-03-16T16:03:01.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/UvzEMmAj.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/4152640/worlds-smallest-colored-image/","duration":"PT1M59S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/4152640/worlds-smallest-colored-image/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```