Photoshop Elements 6: The Missing Manual

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. This chapter and the next two 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 EasyShare Gallery, Adobe's online printing partner. You also get an easy connection to several other popular online photo services (Sharing Photos with Yahoo Maps). And you're not limited merely to ordinary prints these days: You can create hardcover books, calendars, album pages, and greeting cards, with online services, 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 per inch (ppi) in your image. When you don't have enough pixels in your photo, you don't get a good print. (See Adding Canvas for a reminder about why increasing the number of pixels in your photo is usually not desirable.) Three hundred ppi is usually considered optimum, and a quality print needs a resolution of at least 150 ppi to avoid the grainy look you see in low-resolution ...