Printers

While prints can be produced by online or local printing services, most photographers will want a printer for proofing photos at the very least. There are many types of printers available for digital printing, but the most common choice is an inkjet printer. Inkjets print with four or six colors of ink, with six-color printers producing better photographs than four color printers. Dye-based inks are more common, less expensive, and work with more kinds of paper. Pigment-based inks are more expensive, but prints have longer relative lifespans.

Generally, the longevity of a digital print is not as important as with a traditional photograph. If a photo fades, it can easily be reprinted. For work that is to be sold, a photographer might choose an archival printing system, where both the paper and the inks are formulated to last longer than normal inkjet prints at the cost of not having as good a reproduction of a photo. The occasional archival print can be made via an online or local service at a cost of much less than buying an archival printer.

Ink and Paper

While inkjet printers often work with a variety of papers and inks, the best results are often obtained by using the manufacturer's paper and inks, especially the latter. Since changing inks in many inkjet printers results in wasting the remaining ink in the cartridge, it is often easier to simply buy the recommended brand of ink and not experiment. Experimenting with papers, on the other hand, can lead to finding some that work very well with the printer. Most places that offer high-quality inkjet paper sell sample packs to allow photographers to find papers suitable for their printers by making test prints.

Common paper types are glossy photo paper, matte paper, watercolor or other art papers, and canvas. The texture of these papers varies from extremely smooth to fairly coarse and the brightness from bright white to cream, gray, gold, silver, or colorful pastels. Many papers are specially coated to provide a better surface on which to print. Some papers only accept printing on one side, but dual-sided papers of most types exist.

Speed and Quality

Except when printing proofs, the printer should be set to make high-quality prints. The settings for this vary from printer to printer, but usually include settings for printing speed and the dpi at which the printer prints. Low speed and the high dpi yield better prints. The dpi of the printer is separate from the dpi of the image.

In order to speed up printing, flatten the image to be printed and scale it before sending it to the printer, instead of having the printer do the scaling. Scaling the image can be accomplished by resizing or resampling the image. More information can be found on the resizing and resampling tips page.

When resizing the image, it is necessary to pay attention to the dpi. The minimum dpi that makes an acceptable looking print depends on the inks, the paper, and the image itself. A highly detailed image like the one at right will need more dpi than a softer, less detailed image. Printing on high-quality glossy photo paper requires much higher dpi than highly textured matte art paper. For photographic images on photo paper, 200 - 300 dpi is common. The maximum useful dpi is about a third of the printer's resolution, so printing on a 1440 dpi printer an image with more than 480 (1440/3) simply takes more time without adding more quality to the final image.

Printing Multiple Images

Printing multiple images on a page is as easy as opening the images to be printed, creating a blank page with the correct dpi and dimensions, and dragging and dropping images onto the new page. If the printer isn't borderless, it will require margins on the page. These margins should be taken into account in choosing the page size or by keeping images far enough from the edge of the page that they will not be cut off. Previewing the page before printing can help with spotting problems.

Another way to print multiple images on a page is to use Photoshop Element's Picture Package feature. This dialog allows the photographer to choose the page size, the layout, and the dpi for the page to be printed. By choosing to use a folder as the source for the images, clicking inside the outline of any image allows an image from that folder to be chosen to replace the current image.