Printing Digital Photos Tips and Tricks

The age of digital has brought many changes, with printing being a fundamental difference. Many people now choose to not print photos at all and keep their ‘albums’ electronic.

Here are a few things to think about before printing your photos – either yourself or if you decide to take them to a ‘lab’.

If you do decide to have your photos printed, the added advantage is that you can choose the best photos and only print those, keeping the not-so-fantastic photos as electronic files (or you can just delete them).

Then comes the decision – do I print my own photos on the home printer, or take them to get printed?

The answer will depend on the quality of your printer, how many photos you have to print, and whether you can be bothered with printing them yourself.

Where you have quite a few photos, it is likely cheaper to take them to a ‘lab’ to be printed.

Compare the cost of getting them printed, with the cost of doing it yourself – the ink, paper and electricity. Not to mention having to stand there and print each and every photo individually.

Regardless of whether you print the photos yourself, or you take them to get printed, I’d suggest using JPEG files. TIFFs are not accepted at retail outlets, and the files are too large to print at home – it would take hours to print just a few photos.

Taking Photos to be Printed

Going to an external printer is often desirable, as if you don’t have photo editing software, you can do this in-store at their machines.

You can also choose the size – 4″ x 6″, or larger. As well as choosing the type of paper – matt, glossy, or even printing on canvas, or creating a hardcover album.

To make the printing process easier, I typically put all my photos (which I edit and size prior to printing) onto one CD. Where sizes differ, I’ll create folders for each different size, so it’s easier to select at the photo lab.

Do as much work at home as possible, so you’re in and out of the store with ease.

Printing Photos on the Home Printer

Before you begin printing, you will need to calibrate your printer, otherwise what you see on the screen could differ dramatically from what comes out of your printer. It gets very frustrating very quickly when this happens.

In a previous post, I went through the steps on how to calibrate your printer.

When going through the printing process, you can select the type of paper in your printer’s settings. Make sure it matches the type of paper you’re using, as you will find that even if you’ve calibrated your printer correctly, not matching the paper to the printer settings will create a low-quality result.

Where printing on canvas appeals to you, there are canvas papers that go through inkjet and laser printers available from stationery or art stores. While this is more of a gimmick, it does produce interesting results and could be a nice present, especially if you frame the canvas.

These are just a few considerations.

To recap:

• Whether printing at home or not, format your files as JPEG;
• Decide on the type of paper and the size before printing, and size your photos accordingly;
• When printing at home, make sure you set your printer to the type of photo paper you’re using – it makes a big difference;
• Depending on the volume of prints, it may be cheaper (and easier) to take them to a lab to be printed;

Edit your photos before printing, either at home or at machines in retail outlets.

While digital capture is convenient, it is nice to have tangible photos you can show people.

Enjoy printing!