Photoshop Elements 8 for Windows: The Missing Manual

Printing at Home

If you prefer to do your own printing at home, one of the new features in Elements 8 is a redesigned Print window, which looks the same whether you call it up from the Editor or the Organizer. Adobe wanted to make it quick and easy to create the kind of prints you'd order online (as described on Ordering Prints) or get from a store kiosk—prints on typical photo-sized paper. It's still possible to do more elaborate printing from Elements, but the workflow is a bit different in Elements 8.

In earlier versions of Elements, printing was quite different depending on whether you were printing from the Editor or the Organizer. In Elements 8, printing from either spot is quite similar, but printing from Elements 8 differs quite a bit from printing in any previous version of Elements. It may take you a little while to get used to it.

Before you go to print, it's really important to be sure the resolution (ppi) of your print is what you want (see Resizing for Printing for more about resolution), and it's a good idea to do any cropping of your photo (Free Rotate Layer) before you call up the Print window. You can start from either the Editor or the Organizer, and once you're in the Print window, you can choose to create individual prints, a contact sheet of small thumbnails of all your photos, or a picture package of several sizes of prints.

Making Individual Prints

The basic process of printing from Elements 8 is the same no matter where you start or what you're printing. (You'll ...