The Secrets of Professional Photo Printing_10

Today’s home photo printers can yield equally as good results as retail photo labs, and with a great deal more control. Wish to print on matte or brand new paper? Use greeting card paper stock? Add text or captions for scrapbooking? All are simple once you do it all yourself. But getting the highest quality out of your printer requires some understanding of resolution and also dpi, paper and ink styles, and colour correction. Here is what you will need to know to create pro-quality picture prints. 1. Use the highest quality camera settings on your camera Good prints begin with excellent images. Always set your camera to the maximum resolution (number of pixels) and quality (compression level) it could capture. Typically this will be set in a menu on the LCD display, like that of the Canon camera under. High-resolution graphics take more distance, and will lessen the number that may fit on a memory card, but today’s memory cards are so big and cheap that in case you hope to run out of space until you access to a computer, it’s best to just buy another card. Resolution and quality configurations to get a Canon camera (click to expand ). Also get to know the other image settings on your camera, such as scene modes and white balance. To learn more, check out CNET’s The Secrets of Professional Photo Printing excellent guide to scene modes, and Darren Rowse’s white balance tutorial. With the right exposure, your photos will shine on-screen and from print. 2. Scan at the right resolution For printing images from old prints or negatives, it’s vital to use the proper scanning configurations. Most scanners have a automatic mode, in which you just select”record” or”photograph” as well as the scanner program figures out the rest. For more control, switch to a scan program’s expert or expert mode, which means you can set the parameters directly. By way of example, when scanning a print which is going to be enlarged, then scan in a higher resolution than standard to offer enough detail. Ideally, you want to wind up (after editing and cropping) having a picture which matches the native resolution of the printer (usually 240 or 300 dpi). Adjust the scan resolution accordingly. Scantips. Com includes a comprehensive tutorial. “Professional” scan settings for an Epson scanner (click to enlarge). 3. Proper exposure and colour problems Now that you have got high quality source images, it is time to enhance them. Older scanned photographs will normally have fading and color balance issues which may often be adjusted with automatic instruments in your preferred photo editor, such as the Tint instrument in Roxio PhotoSuite (a part of Creator 2010), along with even the Enhance instrument in iPhoto