Photoshop Elements 5: The Missing Manual

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Chapter 16

chapter

16

Printing Your Photos

Now that you’ve gone to so much trouble making your photos look terrific, you’ll

probably want to share them with other people. The next three chapters look at the

many different options Elements gives you for sharing your photos with the world

at large.

This chapter covers the traditional method: printing your photos. You can print

your photos at home on an inkjet printer, take them to a printing kiosk at a local

store, or use an online printing service. Elements makes it especially simple to use

Kodak’s EasyShare Gallery, Adobe’s online printing partner. You also get an easy

connection to several other popular online photo services (see page 442). And

you’re not limited to merely ordinary prints these days. You can create hardcover

books, calendars, album pages, and greeting cards, too.

Getting Ready to Print

Whether you’re going to print at home or send your photos out, you need to make

sure your image file is set up to give you good-looking prints.

The first thing to check is your photo’s resolution, which controls the number of

pixels in your image. When you don’t have enough pixels in your photo, you’re

not going to get a good print. 300 pixels per inch (ppi) is usually considered opti-

mum, and a quality print needs a resolution of at least 150 ppi to avoid the grainy

look you see in low-resolution photos (see page 82 for more on setting your

photo’s ...