Help Printing Photos

[TheChad]

Hi All!

 

I am new to the forum and new to High End Camera's.   I come from Point & Shoot cameras, which have served us well for many years.  But I have 2 kids that play hockey and wanted to capture pictures of them shooting and my goalie stopping pucks.  I don't know much about cameras and Upon asking the expert at the store I was directed to the Sony A6000.

 

The shutter speed is amazing and it saves the rapid pictures to the memory card instantly and the camera is ready to take more rapid pictures in a second or two. Perfect!

 

I brought the camera home and sifted threw the pictures and found a few I wanted to print.   They are saves in 6000x4000 350 DPI JPEG.

 

I took the picture, did some basic cropping in Photoshop (I only have very basic knowledge of Photoshop) and printed the picture.  I have a Samsung C18660FW Color Laser printer that has a 9600 x 600 dpi print ability.   I have had Inkjets for YEARS and went with a laser because even though their DPI was lower, the prints looked better than Inkjets with 2x the DPI...

 

Anyway, I have had this same problem with Inkjets also..

 

The picture looks HD crystal clear on the computer screen, unless you zoom WAY in.  Then it get's grainy.   When I print, it's ALL grainy,  like it's zoomed in.  But I'm only printing 4x6.

 

I don't know what I'm doing wrong?   I'm sure I am missing something.  I'm sure there is some photography secret that I don't know..    How do I make these pictures print good?   I was going to attach one of the photo's to this post, incase it would help, but It's too large and if I modify it to fit the size requirements, it'll defeat the purpose of supplying the raw image.

 

Thanks in advance for the help!

 

-TheChad

[TravelForPictures]

I'm very interested as well.  I've tried to print photos on my HP photo printer and they just don't look up to par with what I think it should be, especially in 4x6.  I would think maybe in 20x30 but still not much at 6000x4000 res.

[tinplater]

You might want to try a larger forum, like the uglyhedgehog.com where there are many specific discussion sections including printing.

[DanArt]

When you print from computer your display needs to be calibrated as well as the units of colors.

 

The pictures print size ( inches ) is what matters as well. I assume the image information is higher then 300DPI. 300DPI is the least amount could be as is the standard size of 8.5 X 11". Usually the MP/resolution makes up for the loss. There is printers formula for this as well.

 

Let say you crop the picture. This means that you have virtually cut the picture from that units of measurements and made it smaller. After that you would want to resize the image itself to a layout that matches what you intend to print.

 

If you have a smaller display sometimes it is kind of hard to know what the outcome is. Unless the units of measurement is corrected.

 

If the pictures are 4X6 inches ( which is really small ) there should be no grainy/washed out issues

when printing asides for looking too close the image itself.

 

There is a couple of photo enhancers programs/apps that cost around $20-$60 dollars.

[Guest Jaf-Photo]

Printing is a bit of science, or even black art. I don't really have enough information to know what is happening in your workflow or how your prints look.

 

An inkjet printer is typically more suited to photographs than a desktop laser printer. I print lab/exhibition quality photos on my large Canon inkjet.

 

That said, you should be able to print a decent picture with a JPEG file from Photoshop. I feel there is a whole lot of confusion regarding resolution etc, which may well be one of the problems.

 

My best tip would be to use some form of printing software, perhaps the OEM programs that accompanied the printer. Open the printer software and print the jpegs straight from there on delault settings.

[Dollanganger]

Part of the problem is that it may be the printer software which is "zooming way in on the photo", hence it causes distortions.

 

Try to zoom in on the specific area you want in Photoshop and crop it, and save it. This way the printer software will not have to zoom in.

 

You can also increase the physical size of the photo in Photoshop while cropping. It helps a lot. Many people increase the DPI while NOT increasing the physical size of the photo. Blow it up to 30x30 and then crop and resave at your desired size.