How To Print Digital Photos
&
Printer Types

How to get the best results when you print digital photos.




Digital photo printers can be either general inkjet printers or photo inkjet printers. A photo inkjet printer may print photos and text or just photos. Both types of printers will give good results. However, if you are looking for superior quality, choose a photo printer. They are designed to give better detail and clarity when you print digital photos.

There are also some excellent multifunction inkjet printers that not only print well, but can scan, copy and even fax. And what about portable inkjet printers that you can travel with and even use in your car?! You will find some excellent printers by Hewlett-Packard. HP Deskjet Printers have great features and also are avaialble in many different price ranges, as are Canon photo Printers.

I also have written a page on some of the best digital photo printers at reasonable prices.

You can also choose to have your printing done elsewhere, such as stores or even use online photo printing. Please visit my page on choosing a digital photo printing service and some companies that I suggest. In addition, many of these services offer digital photo gifts that you can create from your own photos.

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Best Quality Printer Settings

Printer settings in your computer will offer different choices. Choose the correct setting for what you are printing. If you are printing a document, you might choose a setting such as standard.

However, for the best detail when you print digital photos, you should choose the highest setting. (As an aside, higher settings cause your printer to print more slowly.)

You should also have a simple knowledge of megapixels and print size. To read a brief explantion, visit what are megapixels? You can also visit my page on cropping pictures, particularly for printing.


How To Choose the Right Printer Settings

You can go into My Computer and select Printers and Faxes. Each printer's set up may vary. Choose the highest quality setting. You can also do this under Printer Settings each time you print a photo. You may do a lot of document printing and less photo printing. In that case, your main setting might be set to Standard. So don't forget to change it to the higher quality setting when you print digital photos.

No matter what printer you have, you can decide what size you want the photo to print at. Do you want a 4 x 6 inch that will fit nicely in a frame? Or perhaps you would like it to be a showy, larger size of 8 x 10. Choose the setting for the correct size paper, and have the corresponding paper sizes on hand.

Camera Settings and Resolution

When you print digital photos, you obviously want them to turn out the best they can. So just a word about your camera settings. If you plan on printing your photos, keep your camera's settings at the highest resolution possible. You might ask, "Well, why wouldn't I do that?"

You might lower your resolution for a couple of reasons. You can store more pictures in your camera. They will take up less space on your computer. Set at the correct resolution, digital photos will be ready for emailing, without reducing the size. They will download to your computer faster.


Keep the resolution high for good detail when printing photos.

If you are planning on printing out your pictures, in this case you want to keep the resolution high. As a guide, 3 mega pixels or higher will produce nice 8 x 10 inch photos.



Photo Printer Paper

An important aspect of photo printing is using quality paper. You will never get a great photo print from standard computer paper. You must use digital photo paper. Photo printing paper prevents ink from being absorbed by the paper. The photo printing paper can be glossy, semi-glossy or matte.


Photo Printing Software

When you print digital photos, you can print directly from the printing program in Windows XP. If you use photo editing software, you can also print directly from that program.

There is also excellent photo print software specifically for printing that I have used for years. It is called Qimage (read my review). It maximizes the detail and quality automatically. Qimage offers a free trial.