All About Digital Photos - Printing Photos at Home

So You Want to Make a Print
For many people, printing at home with an inkjet printer is a quick way to make nice looking prints. To get the best results, you should follow some rules:

Rule 1 - DON'T DOWNSIZE YOUR DIGITAL PHOTOS FOR PRINTING (actually, this is the only rule). Unfortunately, some photo programs (i.e. Adobe Photoshop) actually encourage people to do just this. Here is the scenario:

A person wants to make a 6" x 4" print.
So, they go into Image Size within their photo program and see that it is telling them that the size of their images is 28" x 21" (yikes!!)
Following what seems to be what the photo program is logically telling them, they change the setting to 6" x 4.5" (they enter 6 and the program using the aspect ratio of the original image sets the second dimension to 4.5") and click on the OK button.
The program dutifully resamples their photo down to 6" x 4.5" in size - taking their original 2048 x 1536 pixel size photo down to 432 x 324 pixels (yikes again!!)

So, what happened?

Well, if you've read the other pages on this site you'll know that the photo program just resampled their image based on the DPI/PPI setting. The original camera photo had a DPI/PPI setting of 72. The program divided 2048 pixels by 72 pixels per inch and got 28 inches. This is a holdover from many years ago when these programs would set the DPI (printer dots per inch) of the output - this is no longer the case but these programs still hang onto this arcane methodology. So, Rule 1 (the only rule) - DON'T DOWNSIZE YOUR DIGITAL PHOTOS FOR PRINTING.

What to Do?
Trimming a Print

The first thing I would recommend is to see if your printer came with photo printing software. If it did, then this is probably the best software to use for everyday printing. My current printer (3 years old) came with wonderful software that makes printing a breeze.

Printing becomes a simple 3 step process, 1) choose the photo, 2) choose the output size and paper type and 3) decide if you want to crop (trim) the photo. The image on the right shows the cropping (trimming) screen (with the rule of thirds invoked). Note that this cropping doesn't affect the original photo - it just sets it up for printing. The cropping outline will always match the aspect ratio of your desired paper size (i.e. 4 x 6, 5 x 7, 8.5 x 11).

If you don't have this type of software you can buy software specifically designed for home printing. Examples of this would be Digital Domain's "Qimage" or Arcsoft's "PhotoPrint", both specifically designed to make photographic prints on a home inkjet printer.

You can also use your existing photo software to make prints (with a bit of manual effort). I'll provide a couple of examples:

Adobe Photoshop (Elements or CS)

Load a COPY of your image into Photoshop
Crop the photo to the desired framing/aspect ratio. For instance, if you want to print a 6" x 4" picture and your digital version is not in a 6 x 4 aspect ratio then select the cropping tool (marquee tool) and in "Style" select "Fixed Aspect Ratio" and enter a width of 6 and a height of 4. The marquee will now maintain this ratio when you go to crop your photo. So, select away. When you have achieved your selection, go to the Image menu and select "Crop" - your image will now be in the aspect ratio you have chosen. For more info about cropping see the page on Changing the Size of a Digital Photo.
Go to the File menu and select "Print Preview"
In the Print Preview menu, select Page Setup - in there set whether you want to print in portrait or landscape and set your printer to the size of the print (i.e. 6" x 4"), the type of paper and quality of the output. Once you've done this, click OK to return to the Print Preview menu and select (put a checkmark in) the box that says "Scale to Fit Media". Click the Print button and print away.
If your image is perfect you might want to save the cropped version - use "Save As" and add something like "6x4-cropped" to the image name to identify the cropped image.

Irfanview
A caveat here is that Irfanview is not the ideal program for printing. Use it as a last resort.

Load a COPY of your image into Irfanview
I've been unable to find an easy way to crop to a specific aspect ratio. There is a "Create Custom Crop Selection" but it doesn't seem to work as advertised (i.e. setting a fixed aspect ratio for the cropping tool). If someone has an easy solution, please let me know. So for now, do your best to crop.
Go to the File menu and choose Print
Set your printer (orientation, paper size, quality) - choose "Best Fit to Page" and then choose "Center Image". Note that if you have an area selected (bounding box) then Irfanview will only print that area.

A Word About Printers
A general rule with current ink jet photo printers (i.e. HP, Epson, Canon) is that these printers work best (colour matching and photo longevity) by using the manufacturer's own inks on their own paper. So, when setting up your in-home print shop, first try your system using the manufacturer's inks (not cheaper 3rd party inks) on the manufacturer's best quality paper (i.e. a glossy or matte high quality photo paper). Use this to benchmark your system. After it has been set up you can fool around with 3rd party inks and paper if you wish. Don't test using plain paper since the colours on top quality photo paper will look dramatically different (much better).

Colour (color) Management
If you do a search on the Internet for Digital Photo Color Management you will find thousands of pages on the topic. I'm not going to get into it here other than a very brief synopsis of the topic.

The issue is matching the colour of the photo on the screen to the colour you get on a paper print. Ideally, the colours you see on the screen are what you will see in the print. This will generally be the case if you are using a post-2001 or so computer and printer and you are shooting and maintaining your photos in sRBG colorspace. Most digital cameras by default shoot in sRGB. Your printer will recognize this and match its output to your sRGB display. Most consumer commercial systems (regular photo stores) also match their printed output to sRGB colorspace digital photos.

If you're having a problem with colour, then do the Internet search described above and be prepared for a long and often confusing explanation of how to match screen colour to printed colour.

The Quick Fix

For many, the problem is not color but brightness, known in computer terms as Gamma. If your monitor is set too bright or too dark then your printer output will not match what you see on screen. This problem has been exacerbated in recent years with the advent of LCD monitors, where the viewing angle can affect the apparent brightness of the screen.

The fix is to adjust the brightness of your monitor to match the brightness of your printer's output. A quick test to see if your monitor is in the ballpark is to see if you can see the message in filmstrip image below:

Screen Calibration

Is this filmstrip black or can you see a message?
If you see a message, your monitor is too bright.
Turn down the brightness level until the filmstrip appears black.
For more information follow the copyright link:
Filmstrip image copyright: Timo Autiokari
Accurate Image Manipulation for Desktop Publishing

If you want a free program to quickly calibrate the gamma for your computer, have a look at QuickGamma.