DesignFirms Article - Printing digital photos

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2006-01-12 -- The common scenario is…You have taken a lot of beautiful digital photos, but you do not know how to make quality printouts? If you are printing them yourself using a photo printer, it helps to know some tips and tricks.

This article will show you some of the best practices in printing digital photos.

Good pictures give good prints

This is obvious. If you have taken photo at a measly 1 megapixel resolution, you can't expect to have a huge A4 quality printout. If you've taken the same photo at a 5 megapixel resolution, then yes, you can have that A4 print. As a rule, remember that you need at least a 2 megapixel resolution photo to have a decent 4x6 printout.

Remove defects from the image first

Check the photo itself to ensure there are no specks or noise. If there are, use your favorite photo editor to remove them if possible. Of course, remember to save a backup copy of the image first. You can read up this guide on touching up photos if you need help.

Crop if necessary

Crop the picture you are going to print if it makes sense to do so. If you do not want to print the surrounding area around the subject, remove it. That is where you should crop away the area around the subject first, and then proceed to print. This saves you a lot of ink too.

Select a good printer

This is very important. Only use a quality printer to do the job. Always try to find a printer with excellent print quality If one color runs out, you just need to replace that one color, instead of throwing away the whole cartridge.

Select good photo paper

Many people tend to forget that good photo prints also depend on the paper you use. As a rule, you should go for paper that is of the correct thickness, produces good color and has good resistance to fading.

If you will be handling your photos a lot, try to choose thicker paper. If you intend to place your photos in an album, then paper thickness isn't too important – you can choose thinner photo paper.

Color brilliance is important too. Try buying some sheaves of photo paper and print out some colorful images on them to test them out. Buy them in bulk only if the color tests turn out good.

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