Printing your Photos at Home - Useful Tips and Hints for Best Quality

Digital photography revolutionized the way in which we take, view and share photos and also the way in which we print them. Many digital photos never get printed but there are still many of us who prefer tangible paper prints. Photos can be printed using a professional service (in-store or online) or at home. In this article we will give you tips for getting quality prints at home.

A few years ago getting high quality prints at home was an expensive task that was only suitable for semi-professionals who could afford it and who had the know-how. Today low cost printers can generate amazing quality prints and sophisticated software can do most of the processing work behind the scenes. The result is that even amateur photographers can generate very high quality prints by pressing a single Print button.

There are a few simple tips to follow that can help in getting higher quality prints:

Edit your photos: make sure that you print exactly the photo that you want printed. Using simple photo editing tools (such as Photoshop or even Windows built-in Paint application) you can crop a photo to include just the area you are interested in or crop out parts which you do not want in the print. For example you took a photo of a group of friends but on the left corner of the photo there is a bystander that just happened to be there. You can crop the photo to include only your friends and thus effectively eliminate the unwanted object from the print.

When cropping photos always remember aspect-ratio - depending on the paper and the printer you're using sometimes you're limited to a certain photo size. For example if you print on a special 4X6 photo paper any source photo that is not in a 4X6 aspect ratio will have to be either stretched, cropped or parts of the print will be left blank. Make sure that you crop your photo to fit a specific aspect ratio if you're printing on a specific aspect-ratio paper.

More photo processing can be done in order to enhance your prints. It can include red-eye removal (many software packages will do it for you automatically) contrast enhancement and more. For example if a portion of the photo that is important to you is a bit dark - you can "stretch" the color palette in a way that this section will look more lit and detailed. This will usually be on the expense of "overexposing" other portions of the photo that you care less about.

Always remember photo resolution: Every photo is built out of pixels. The more pixels in a photo the higher the photo resolution is. We will not get into details here about the correlation between mega pixels and print quality but a general rule of thumb is that to get good print quality you need 300 pixels per inch or more. This means for example that the biggest paper size a 2 mega pixels photo can be printed on is 4X6 while an 8 mega pixels photo can be printed on an 8X10.

Pick the right printer and paper: there are many different printing each with its advantages and disadvantages. They range in quality and cost. To get the best print quality you should use photo paper in conjunction with a printer that supports such paper. Photo paper and photo printers are more expensive than document oriented A4 Inkjet printers. Choose the printer by evaluating how many prints you will make and how important quality is to you. If you print occasionally for fun an Inkjet printer with normal or photo paper is probably good enough for you. If you print a lot and quality is very important photo paper with a photo printer is the way to go. As a rule of thumb glossy photo paper provides the best quality for color photo prints while matte photo paper provides the best quality for black and white prints.

Printer ink and maintenance: printers need to be setup and maintained. It is extremely important to follow the instructions and to use compatible ink cartridges. High quality compatible ink can make the difference between low and high quality prints. It is usually recommended to buy ink from the same brand as the printer. Some calibration is usually needed when replacing ink and sometimes every few months of use. Follow the instructions for such procedures carefully as a calibrated printer results in much better quality prints than a printer that is not aligned and is poorly maintained.

In conclusion it is very easy to print your photos at home. Just buying a mid-range printer and hitting the "Print" button in your photo viewing software will probably result in good prints that are satisfactory for most consumers. Following some simple tips can enhance those prints to professional quality. As technology advances and prices go down experimenting at home with various photo processing tools, paper sizes, paper types and inks becomes affordable and is probably the best way to find what combination yields the best print quality for you.