Digital Photography 101 – How to Best Print Digital Pictures

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2 April 2010

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The highlight of a Digital Photography 101 class is sharing your photography with others. With digital photography there are many ways you can do this: email, your website, online photography albums, but as for those really good photos, they deserve to be printed and framed in beautiful unique picture frames.

Besides hanging your best photographs in wall picture frames, there are a few other reasons you may find you have for printing your photos. Here are some of the ways you can use printed pictures:

Displayed in wood picture frames on the mantle, table and wall displays
Posters
Wallet pictures
Memory books
Greeting cards
Photo crafts
Photo competitions

Even in our digital day and age, we still have lots of interesting and beautiful things to do in print! But printing a photograph isn't as easy as selecting “Print” on your computer. Printing a high quality print is harder than just printing out a copy of an email or document. The following tips will make the process easier:

Digital Photography 101 – Pixels Matter

Whenever you resize a photo on your computer, think first if you may ever want to print it. If you do want to print it, always save the original.

When taking pictures, you always want to know if you plan to print the picture so you can take it with a high enough resolution to get a quality print in the size you want. Below are some examples to help you know how many pixels are needed for different sizes of prints.

High Quality Picture: 10×13 inches
2592 x 1944 pixels (5 megapixel camera set for high resolution)

High Quality Picture: 9×12 inches
2272 x 1704 pixels (4 megapixel camera set for high resolution)

High Quality: 8 x 10 inches
2048 x 1536 pixels ( a 3 mega pixel camera set for high resolution)

High Quality: 4 x 6 inches, 5 x 7 inches
1600 x1200 pixels (a 2 mega pixel camera set for high resolution)

As you can see, you don't need a camera with tons of megapixels to get quality prints.

Using the correct settings on your printer is also important. Check with your manual or the manufacturers recommendations on their website. You can then use a photo editor to resample the pictures to the right dpi. For those new to printing, dpi stands for “dots per inch”. The more dots per inch, the smoother the picture grain and the better the image looks. Ink jet printers used today for printing quality pictures often have dpi resolution of around 1200 to 4800. This range of dpi will make quality prints that have around 140 to 300 pixels per inch.

The ppi (pixels per inch) is the measurement for the resolution of a digital picture and should not be confused with the height and width of a picture. For example a 200 pixel x 300 pixel picture would be very small while a picture with a 300 ppi isn't necessarily small because ppi refers to the quality of the picture (not the physical size).

Digital Photography 101 – Using the Right Type of Photo Printer Paper

Use photo-printing paper and if possible that which is made by your printer's manufacture and is recommended for your model or model family. Use special paper for projects such as greeting cards. Both are sold at many office supply and crafts stores, as well as online.

If you're looking for an easier way to get high quality prints, say for a special event such as a contest or a large size photograph you want to frame and display, remember that a local or online printer is another option.

Have fun printing your digital images!