Fen's Digital Photography Page: Printing

This page was created to help people create better quality prints from online digital images. There's no question that doing so is still a bit of an art and takes some trial and error, but I hope that this page helps answer most of the questions you may have. If I left something out - or if something is not clear - please let me know and I will try to remedy the situation.

What makes a print look "near photo quality" is a combination of things, perhaps the most important of which is the resolution with which it is printed, measured in "dots per inch" or dpi. (Actually, there are other measurements used in the printing trade such as "pixels per inch" and "lines per inch", but I'll stick with dpi for this discussion.) A quality Kodak photograph has perhaps 5000 dpi resolution. An expensive art book may print plates at 600-1200 dpi. Slick magazine photos generally are around 200-300 dpi. Newspaper photos are about 85 dpi. And your computer screen is probably 72 dpi. As you will see, the more pixels you squeeze into an inch, the better.

Tips for high quality prints:

1. Don't print from your browser

If you print what you see on the screen in (say) your browser, you'll get a print quality of about 72 dpi - less than a newspaper photo - no matter what level of quality you ask your printer to print at. Instead, use your browser only to find the photo that you want to print and then to download it to your home machine for printing using other tools...

2. Use the highest quality image (most number of dots) that you can obtain

Most new printers are capable of 300-600 dpi (dots per inch) - some more! - in their high-quality mode. So if you print using a bigger (on your screen) original and squeeze that many dots into a 5"x7" photo, you'll obtain good results.

A little math is useful here: note that a 1200x1600 pixel photo on your screen (at 72 dpi) will display at about 16"x22", bigger than most screens! (A pixel is the smallest element of an image - think of each pixel as a dot. Here's a better definition of "pixel".) But if you use this image as the source and squeeze all those pixels into a 5"x7" print, you'll be getting about 230 dpi. Printed on good paper using a 600 dpi printer (the extra resolution prevents banding and other artifacts from showing up) this will look very nice.

You'll notice that the photos on pix.fen.net can be downloaded to your machine as "full size" images of generally around 1704x2272. It may take a few minutes over a 56K modem, but the printed results are worth the wait.

3. Crop, adjust and print using photo software designed for these tasks

Now that you've got a full-sized digital photo (either downloaded or from your own camera) it's time to print it. So you've got this giant 1704x2272 pixel original and want to print it as a nice 5"x7" print.

First, you may want to crop the image, cutting out that pedestrian who happened to walk into the corner of the picture just as you snapped it, or perhaps simply focusing in on your subject. Here's an example:

• the original photograph (resized to 640x480 for easy viewing)
• the same shot cropped to better show the subject (and sized as above)

After cropping, you may want to adjust the brightness, color, hue or any of a number of other tweaks to make the picture look better. One feature I use regularly is "red-eye removal." For all these operations, you'll want to use some specialized image software, see below.

4. Set your printer's properties to print in "Highest Quality" or "Best" mode

There are quite a few very good printers under $200 that print near photo-quality. Hell, we print using our old HP Deskjet 712c (using Epson heavy-weight matte photo paper) and get excellent results. I'm not going to suggest a printer, but look at machines from Lexmark, Epson, HP and Cannon in the near $200 range. Use good paper and set the printer (in the print dialog that pops up) to print using the highest quality mode provided - or the quality that matches the paper that you have inserted if that option is available. (Look under the "Properties" tab.) Update: we just bought a Canon i850 for $170 and it prints amazing photos.

Since you're printing using the highest quality images you can get and squeezing more pixels into a smaller print, you're printing at a higher resolution than available from your browser. The image will print more sharply, and I think you'll love the results.

5. Use heavyweight or photo paper

Normal paper can't handle the increased resolution (it will bleed) so use special photo paper. If your printer supports it (and most do, nowadays) try the glossy paper that will yield results close to a regular photograph. Or try the matte photo paper - we actually like it better, and it's cheaper! Hint: since the paper's expensive, you can print two 5"x7" photos on one sheet by turning it around and running it through a second time. Or some photo software (such as what comes with the i850) will let you place several photos on a sheet for optimal use.

6. If the photo looks off-color, replace your color cartridge

We find that we can print about sixty 5"x7" photos from a single color ink cartridge ($24), plus about $6 for the paper. So our cost is about $0.50 per print, but since we only print exactly what we want, it ends up being cheaper than the old (analog) method.

Note that the primary cost here is the ink cartridge - before buying a printer it's a good idea to find out how much an ink refill costs, and how many full-color pages a cartridge will print before needing replacement.

Image Manipulation Software

There are many easier to use - though of course not as full featured - programs for the Mac and Windows platforms. I've grown to like ACDSee, a program that used to be free, but now costs about fifty bucks. I think it's a great program as it makes rotation, cropping, color touch up, red-eye removal, etc. very easy. Plus, for another $twenty you can get a module called Fotoslate that offers handy printer composition capabilities to make it easy to print e.g. 4 pix on a page or a bunch of wallet-sized photos - handy if you print a lot of pictures like me. But I'm sure there's good freeware programs available, too - see e.g. tucows.com for downloads for your system. (If you're in the market for a printer, wait on buying additional software as you may get everything you need with the printer.)

New Macintosh owners who are running OSX can use the excellent new iPhoto software, which is simultaneously the best and easiest photo collection, manipulation and sharing program available anywhere. For the Open Source GNU/Linux and *BSD community, there are many available programs, ranging from The Gimp, which is nearly as full-featured as Photoshop, to EEyes, which provides simple image editing capabilities.

Image Software and Printer Review Links

• GNU/Linux:
  • gPhoto - digital camera software
  • GQview - the best and easiest to use image viewer/editor
  • The Gimp - the GNU Image Manipulation Program
  • Gimp-Print drivers for high-quality GNU/Linux printing
  • XV - another kitchen-sink image manipulation program
• Windoze & Mac:
  • ACDSee
  • Photoshop - professional grade image editing
  • ThumbsPlus by Cerious Software
• Macintosh OSX:
  • iPhoto
• Printer Reviews:
  • Photo-Quality Printer Reviews from Steve's Digicams
  • PC Photo Review - great for printers as well as other information, too.
  • PC World on Printers - lots of reviews and other stuff
• Printing Services
  • Ofoto by Kodak
  • More links from Google (and most every drugstore has a photo printing kiosk now...)
• More technical details
  • Image Detail by Roger Clark
  • Wilhelm Imaging Research - very technical and theoretical

My mother (who will never be online) loves the prints I send her.