Digital photography printing has opened a completely new world for amateur and professional photographers alike.
For most photographers, the backup of digital photography printing offers unprecedented freedom to get the best digital shots. No more worrying about that precious piece of film running out too soon - all without you knowing for sure that anything worthwhile is on it!
However, when it comes to getting the actual digital photography printing done, there are some things to keep in mind to prevent wasting too much of your quality photo paper - not to mention your costly printing ink.
With digital photography printing in mind, the first thing to look at is to ensure that you download the pictures at their full resolution. If you end up with 72dpi (dots per inch) pictures, your print quality will be useless. A 72dpi resolution is only good for viewing on your computer screen, but 200 - 300dpi will give a good quality 8x10 print.
Large prints are usually viewed from a greater distance, therefore for a 13x19 inch print 200 pixels per inch is probably enough, whereas for a 5x7 inch print you might need around 300 pixels per inch.
By looking at the file size you will quickly learn to be an expert judge on quality. A picture of 100kb (kilobytes) or less, is most probably too low-resolution for good quality digital photography printing. Once you get up to a minimum of 400kb, you are working with a more useful resolution for an 8x10 print.
When doing digital photography printing, you will mostly work with the JPEG file format. Keep in mind that every time you open and save a JPEG file, you lose some of the image information. You'll therefore want to do all your changes in one sitting, and then save them only once.
If you're proud enough of your photographic effort - or if you want those family shots to be available for the next generation - you'll want your prints to be done on decent paper, just like you were used to in the 'old days' of photographic paper! In the end, your digital photography printing will be only as good as the paper you are using.
There are many new coated papers available specifically for this purpose, and you should look at what is recommended for the printer you are using.
These digital photography printing papers don't come cheap, so plan carefully. Print only after final cropping, or on completion of other changes, such as adding a border with your imaging software.
The longest-lasting paper is acid free, usually called archival paper in the world of inkjet printing.
Regular color inkjet and laser printers are good for text and charts, but not always great for digital photography printing. Printers which are PictBridge-enabled, allow you to do digital photography printing directly from the camera. Portable printers, such as the HP Photosmart 320 series, allow you to take a snap and print out 4x6 digital photography pictures anywhere on the move.
Incidentally, for smaller 4x6 inch prints, dye-sublimation printers give excellent quality prints, and they are usually waterproof - like the film prints you were used to! However, the materials for such digital photography printing do not come cheap!
If you can't get good enough results with your own digital photography printing, especially if you're printing larger than 8x10, you may want to try one of the brick-and-mortar, or even online photo labs which make use of dedicated photo printers with excellent results.
Photo labs can handle digital files directly from your memory card. Take your homemade CD, your digital camera, or your memory card along for professional quality digital photography printing.
