Printing Digital Camera Photos
Digital cameras are becoming more and more popular compared to the traditional film cameras because of their benefits and ease of use. They are economical as they don’t use film, hence no film or development costs. You can even print your own photos at home instead of going to the trouble of having it printed at the shop.
1.
In order to have good prints, you need to start out with a good photo. You can also improve your image by using an image editor. There are many good photo editors available these days, in which you can crop, enhance, touch and do many other improvements to your prints. I personally use Photoshop. It may be said that a photo editing knowledge and skill is essential for printing good images.
2.
Print
quality of an image is dependent on an optimum resolution in pixels. Too high a resolution will waste your printer ink and may not give a good quality print. Too small a resolution will give a grainy print. A resolution of 300pixels per inch (ppi) gives excellent results, between 200 – 300 is good. The higher the power of your digital camera is in mega pixels, the larger the prints you will be able to obtain. For printing purposes your digital camera should be at least a 3.2 mega pixel one. Set your digital at the highest resolution in case you want to print it late. Lesser mega pixel cameras maybe good for publishing photos online but they are not much good for printing a decent sized photo.
In order to print a 4x6 inch photo at 300ppi you will need a 1200 x 1800 pixel image. A two mega pixel camera may be sufficient for this. A 3 mega pixel camera will produce a 1000 x 1400 pixel image which will give a 5x7 inch print. An 8 mega pixel camera gives a 3456x2304 pixel image, which gives a 11.5x7.6 inch print and so on.
Reducing the resolution from 300 to 200 will give you a good print instead of the excellent print that you get with 300.
3.
Then comes the
quality of the photo paper you use for printing. This makes a lot of difference to how your print is going to come out. Using the photo paper recommended by your printer gives best results.
4.
The
printer and the
ink cartridges that you use also affect your prints. Printers come in different qualities. Photo printers print much better images than the usual text printers. The higher the number of ink cartridges a printer uses, the better results it gives. Six and eight cartridge printers give better colour quality to a print than four cartridge ones. Each of the above components affect your end result.
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