Printing at home

Printing at home is becoming a very popular option. These days even the cheapest ink jet printers do an excellent job reproducing photo images. Here are some tips to get the best results with your ink jet printer:

Get good paper

The better your paper, the better your image will look. You can get photographic quality paper at most office supply stores and electronic stores.

Do you need to get the photo paper made by the same company that made your printer? It's probably a good idea because the print drivers for your printer will know about that paper type. But not everyone agrees about this. Some people swear by Espon papers in any printers and some people love the Kodak papers or the Canon papers. If you decide to experiment, buy a small quantity first so you don't end up wasting it.

Matte or Glossy?

Matte photo papers for ink jet printers look more like nice card stock than a matte photograph. They still look good though. Glossy papers are shiny and look more like the lab print they are imitating. It's just personal preference which one to use. Some people use both depending on what they plan to do with the image.

Use the right Quality Settings

When you print your image, you'll get much better results if you change your print settings to tell your printer exactly what you're printing and what kind of paper you are using. Every printer driver organizes it's settings differently so you may have to hunt around to find them.

On Macintosh

This example shows a Canon i950 print driver on a Mac. Select "Quality & Media" from the drop-down:

For "Media Type", select the type of paper you are using. Change "Print Mode" to "Printing a top-quality photo".

If you've made color corrections to your images, be sure to turn off the printer's color correction using the "Color Options" menu item and changing "Color Correction" to None.

On Windows

If you are using Windows, select the "Properties" button on the Print dialog:

The dialog that appears has all the settings you need to change under the Main tab:

Set "Media Type" to the paper type you are using. Set "Print Quality" to "High". If you have already performed color enhancements on your image, set "Color Adjustment" to Manual. As long as you don't change any settings under the Set button, changing to Manual is the same as turning color adjustment off.

Keep them dry

Once your prints come off the printer, especially if you've used Glossy paper, be careful not to handle them until they are fully dry. Even after they dry, be careful how you handle them. Ink jet printers use water-soluble inks so the sweat on your hands can smear them. To help them last longer, put them in a frame or insert them into a plastic page protector.

Is the color right?

Most likely the color on your prints won't exactly match what you see on your screen. If your prints are always lighter or always darker than your screen, you should adjust the brightness setting on the computer monitor to match.

If your prints aren't exactly the same color, you have several choices. First, if the print looks good even though it is different, you can just keep it. If the print doesn't look good, you can go back to your picture editor and try adjusting the image so it prints better. Alternatively, you can try not performing color enhancements on your images in your picture editor and use the color adjustment built into the printer instead.

But most people find that even though the color on their monitors and their printers aren't an exact match that they are still getting nice, acceptable prints as long as the image looks good on the screen.