Printing Your Digital Photos

Article: Printing Your Digital Photos (http://www.photographycorner.com/articles/digital/printing-your-digital-photos)

Thanks for the great article, motiontide!

Thanks for posting the article. I print all my photos with my inkjet printer and really can get pricey, so I only print the ones that I think come out good, not all of them. I am wanting to invest in a new printer though as mine is pretty S L O W and I'm very impatient. I have an Epson 777 right now but looking into a faster one. :D

something that this does not say---Or I may of overlooked it---on most pics---change you resolution to 300ppi in photoshop or another aftermarket program

Another thing to do also is to take your photos and make sure they are sharpened up really good in photoshop or similar product. It can make a ver big difference on how it looks on print. It may look bad on the computer screen but if you do it right it will be crip when printed. Great Article though.

Thank you for the helpful article about printing you pictures...Joy

I've wasted god knows how much paper and ink getting the colours to look right on printouts with my Epson 870 - very tedious work not made any easier by the fact that Epson only supplies one custom profile for this printer, and that's for Epson ColorLife paper which they've now discontinued! Independant paper-manufacturer's profiles are available of course, but I prefer to use Epson paper which is readily available in my local shops. Anyhow, things came to a head when my Epson printer blocked up big time. No amount of cleaning (even with solvent cartridges) would clear it. So now I print only 6 x 4 on a kodak easyshare printer hooked up to my PC to print shots taken with my Olympus E-300. They look great (especially skin tones)with little effort at all other than making sure the images are optimised in Photoshop first -- no printer profiles required and no blockages either since the kodak printer uses thermal-transfer not wet ink or dye. If I want any images bigger than 4 x 6 I put them on a cd and pop it into a processing lab. Less time struggling with printing, more time using my camera!

Another point worth mentioning is that when you are printing 4X6's make sure you have your pictures size to a 3:2 ratio so that cropping doesn't occur in the wrong place when printing.

Honestly what is the point of printing inkjet at all?

1) It's expensive
2) The quality is unusable for more then just family snapshots
3) It lasts a fraction of the time of silvered paper prints
etc.

The only advantage is convienence, and it's a small one over emailing your photos to a lab and picking them up in 15 minutes.

good article motiontide.

I found some extremely good deals on my ink cartridges for my r2400 in one of those links, thanks a lot.

Many dye-sub printers will print as large as 8x10 now. They are not protable but print in very high quality. It is probably still cheaper to send them out for processing.

I got a great deal from Snapfish, so I use them a lot. That was a great article, but I will stick with letting someone else do it...lol.

I cheat and send my pics to Sams Club.

It's very convenient for me since most of my pics are of school kids for the yearbook or my own kids. It's very easy to get home, edit, upload to Sams Club, then pick up in an hour. I've never once had a bad print job. It's cheap and fast! - Gosh I love digital!

I found some extremely good deals on my ink cartridges for my r2400 in one of those links, thanks a lot.

Care to share the website? thanks. R

Wish I knew of a lab that could print in 15 mins.. Honestly I feel that very few of the labs here give much attention to quality. I have found that you end up with a blue or green cast on the prints in most cases. I do most of my own printing on an Epson 880 and as long as I use glossy 255 gsm paper the results are quite good.

I have an Epson 2200 and have used it for the last several years. Since I got it, I've not used a lab to print at all. If you take care of the prints the way prints should be taken care of, they will last ever bit as long as the RC paper equivelent that you get out of labs today... in fact, a lot of labs also use ink jet to print on, it's just a higher quality version. Even silver paper prints printed and processed for archival conditions, won't last that long if they are left out in the sun, allowed to collect dust on them, kept in too hot or to cold or too humid of an invornement. So just because a custom lab is used, does not mean that the prints will last any longer than the better quality ink jet prints will last.

I don't print myself because it's cheaper than a lab... in most cases, it's not. But yes, it is more convenent, faster and in a lot of cases when I am trying different settings, crops and tweaks, I can find out the combination that works a lot faster and cheaper. Try doing that by sending out for prints, making changes, sending them out again, make some more changes, etc.

I print in mostly 8x10 and 12x18 size. Although the paper comes in 8.5x11 and 13x19 size and they have to be trimmed down. I wish they came in the proper size so I didn't have to trim, but I've gotten pretty good at it and have a decent rotary trimmer. Although Epson makes excellent paper, the best paper that I have found is Ilford Smooth Pearl paper. This stuff is great and eleminates a few of the problems with banding that Epson paper seems to have from time to time. I go through hundreds of boxes of this stuff.

I have also taken my Epson 2200 on location with me when I've gone to multi-day events. I don't print while I'm shooting (I'm too busy), but I can print off some large samples that night to put up for people to see the next morning. This always goes over real big and I like it better than setting up my laptop with a slide show of the images.

I wish I could upgrade to the new Epson 4400 or even a 9600, but I don't print as much as I use too, so I can't really justify it right now. Maybe one of these days.

Mike

That was an informative article Tim. Many good photographer wasted time and effort when it comes to printing their photos 'cause they just don't know how to retain the quality of the photos they capture when it comes now to printing. Some can't decide what printers to use,what type of paper, and the likes.

Another thing to do also is to take your photos and make sure they are sharpened up really good in photoshop or similar product. It can make a ver big difference on how it looks on print. It may look bad on the computer screen but if you do it right it will be crip when printed. Great Article though.

about how much should you sharpen it?