Photoshop CS5: The Missing Manual

Printer-Friendly Resizing and File Formats

Besides making sure your images are in the right color mode, installing the right color profiles for your printer and paper, and calibrating your monitor—are you exhausted yet?—you also need to make sure your image's size matches the size you want to print. For example, if you want to print your image at 5"x7", it should really be 5"x7" (as opposed to, say, taking a 6"x8" image and cramming it into that smaller format). You also need to make sure your image has sufficient resolution (see the table on Resolution guidelines for print for resolution guidelines). Finally, you need to save your image in a file format that works well with your printer.

Up To Speed: Profiles Aren't All Equal

It's shocking but true: Some profiles are just plain wrong!

Photoshop offers many built-in profiles (like "Adobe RGB 1998") that include general color mode info, along with slightly more specific though still generic profiles (like "US Sheetfed Coated v2") that contain gamut information for printing on a standard sheetfed printing press, using standard inks and coated paper. If your printing conditions are indeed standard, you may get decent results by using this profile.

You can also use paper-specific profiles, commonly referred to as paper or output profiles, created by manufacturers like Epson, who make profiles to match almost every kind of paper they sell: glossy, luster, matte, and so on. The more closely a profile matches your printing conditions, the ...