Digital Photography: The Missing Manual

Printing Photos with Picasa

Picasa makes printing easy. You make decisions about the size and layout of your photos, and Picasa shows you the results before you print. As explained earlier in this chapter (see “How to Make Great Prints at Home” in Section 16.1.1), the resolution of your images, the settings on your printer, and your choice of paper all contribute to great prints. In Picasa, you can check your photos’ resolution in Library view, and control the other settings on the Print Preview screen.

Here’s what you need to do:

1. In Library view, click the thumbnails of the photos you want to print.

   As you click, the images appear in the Picture tray at the lower-left corner of the window. Ctrl+click to select several photos at once.

2. To make sure a photo has sufficient resolution for the print size you have in mind, check its resolution by choosing Picture → Properties (or press Alt+Enter).

   The photo’s properties, including pixel dimensions, appear in a separate window. As explained in Section 16.1.1 and shown in Figure 16-3, you can use these numbers to calculate optimal print size for this photo.

3. When you’re done selecting photos, click the Print button at the bottom of the Library window.

   Picasa’s Print Preview screen appears. To the right, you see how your photos will print on a sheet of paper. At left are the print settings.

4. In the panel at left, choose your print layout.

   As shown in Figure 16-4, Picasa provides six different photo layout options.

5. Click either the “Shrink to ...