Making good prints from your digital camera

The most difficult part of digital imaging is making a paper print that is as attractive and durable as a conventional photographic print. Late model ink jet printers from Epson and Hewlett Packard can handle the first part - the look - pretty well. Choose a printer that uses a special cartridge of photo color inks, which have more colors than conventional printers. I've always preferred the Epson Photo Stylus series, but the HP printers with PhotoSmart technology are also fine. 

Choose a high-quality print paper such as Kodak Photo Paper. Some are as thick and glossy as real photo paper.

In the printer control dialog box, you've got to tell your printer that you will be using this premium paper. That way it knows to use more ink and to distribute it in the ideal manner for a photograph. Print speed will probably be much slower than when you're printing text.

Photos looks better when you use your imaging software to properly prepare the file before you print it. If you resize the image as follows, PhotoShop will produce the optimum number of pixels to make a print that doesn't look "grainy" 

In the image size dialog box, set the image size to the output size you want, with the resolution set at 300 dpi. Be sure that the "resample" option is selected. 

You may also find that adjusting color and contrast improves your pictures.

No matter how good your printer, ink jet pictures will not last as long as good photographic prints. Epson recently developed two Sylus models, the 870 and the 1270, which were intended to give "archival" quality prints - to make prints which wouldn't fade or change for perhaps 50 years under ideal circumstances. In the real world, in areas with airborn pollution, noticeable color shifts have been seen in as little as four weeks! No doubt this situation will improve in time.

At Chris' Camera Center we use an extraordinary printer made by Fuji, which uses a process called Pictrography. A color LED array actually paints light onto a photographic donor material, which physically transfers it to a receiver sheet. It's reminiscent of the great old Polaroid pull-and-peel films. The result is a true photographic print of extreme quality and superb staying power. The only downside is the cost - the printer is around $39,000 and the donor/paper combination is about 7 times as expensive per square foot as convention RA-4 color print paper in the minilab area. If you really want a top quality enlargement, however, we'll be happy to make one for you. Just bring us your files on disk or camera memory card.

After looking at an awful lot of images, I've come to the conclusion that a resolution of 135 pixels or more per inch is the minimum for images to pass as photographs. 

Having carefully calculated that, I must admit to having made images bigger than the above "maximums" that look pretty good. Using Adobe PhotoShop and resizing the images to increase the pixel count lets you make sharper images, but that can't replace detail that's not in the original photo.

Chris' Camera Center South
106 Laurens Street SW
Aiken, South Carolina
803 641-0501  e-mail us