Printing your Photos at Home - Useful Tips and Hints for Best Quality

Author: Ziv Haparnas

Digital photography revolutionized the way in which we take, view and share photos and also the way in which we print them. Many digital photos never get printed but there are still many of us who prefer tangible paper prints. Photos can be printed using a professional service (in-store or online) or at home. In this article we will give you tips for getting quality prints at home.

A few years ago getting high quality prints at home was an expensive task that was only suitable for semi-professionals who could afford it and who had the know-how. Today low cost printers can generate amazing quality prints and sophisticated software can do most of the processing work behind the scenes. The result is that even amateur photographers can generate very high quality prints by pressing a single Print button.

There are a few simple tips to follow that can help in getting higher quality prints:

Edit your photos: make sure that you print exactly the photo that you want printed. Using simple photo editing tools (such as Photoshop or even Windows built-in Paint application) you can crop a photo to include just the area you are interested in or crop out parts which you do not want in the print. For example you took a photo of a group of friends but on the left corner of the photo there is a bystander that just happened to be there. You can crop the photo to include only your friends and thus effectively eliminate the unwanted object from the print.

When cropping photos always remember aspect-ratio - depending on the paper and the printer you're using sometimes you're limited to a certain photo size. For example if you print on a special 4X6 photo paper any source photo that is not in a 4X6 aspect ratio will have to be either stretched, cropped or parts of the print will be left blank. Make sure that you crop your photo to fit a specific aspect ratio if you're printing on a specific aspect-ratio paper.

More photo processing can be done in order to enhance your prints. It can include red-eye removal (many software packages will do it for you automatically) contrast enhancement and more. For example if a portion of the photo that is important to you is a bit dark - you can "stretch" the color palette in a way that this section will look more lit and detailed. This will usually be on the expense of "overexposing" other portions of the photo that you care less about.

Always remember photo resolution: Every photo is built out of pixels. The more pixels in a photo the higher the photo resolution is. We will not get into details here about the correlation between mega pixels and print quality but a general rule of thumb is that to get good print quality you need 300 pixels per inch or more. This means for example that the biggest paper size a 2 mega pixels photo can be printed on is 4X6 while an 8 mega pixels photo can be printed on an 8X10.

Pick the right printer and paper: there are many different printing each with its advantages and disadvantages. They range in quality and cost. To get the best print quality you should use photo paper in conjunction with a printer that supports such paper. Photo paper and photo printers are more expensive than document oriented A4 Inkjet printers. Choose the printer by evaluating how many prints you will make and how important quality is to you. If you print occasionally for fun an Inkjet printer with normal or photo paper is probably good enough for you. If you print a lot and quality is very important photo paper with a photo printer is the way to go. As a rule of thumb glossy photo paper provides the best quality for color photo prints while matte photo paper provides the best quality for black and white prints.

Printer ink and maintenance: printers need to be setup and maintained. It is extremely important to follow the instructions and to use compatible ink cartridges. High quality compatible ink can make the difference between low and high quality prints. It is usually recommended to buy ink from the same brand as the printer. Some calibration is usually needed when replacing ink and sometimes every few months of use. Follow the instructions for such procedures carefully as a calibrated printer results in much better quality prints than a printer that is not aligned and is poorly maintained.

In conclusion it is very easy to print your photos at home. Just buying a mid-range printer and hitting the "Print" button in your photo viewing software will probably result in good prints that are satisfactory for most consumers. Following some simple tips can enhance those prints to professional quality. As technology advances and prices go down experimenting at home with various photo processing tools, paper sizes, paper types and inks becomes affordable and is probably the best way to find what combination yields the best print quality for you.

About the Author:

Ziv Haparnas is a technology veteran and writes about practical technology and science issues. This article can be reprinted and used as long as the resource box including the backlink is included. You can find more information digital photo printing printing and photography in general on printrates.com – a site dedicated to digital photo prints

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Printing your Photos at Home - Useful Tips and Hints for Best Quality

Taking Digital Photos for Online and Printed Product Catalogs

Author: Chris Marshall

Whether you are planning to build an online product catalog or a printed version including rich digital photos will enhance it and will increase potential sales. When building a catalog photos are a powerful tool that you must use. Here are a few tips for taking digital photos that will bring justice to your products and will help increasing sales.

Product catalogs that do not include photos are boring. For example imagine that you are looking to buy a new digital photo printer. You just found a new online catalog or got a catalog via regular mail. The catalog has plenty of digital photo printers and also a lot of information about them such specifications, capabilities descriptions and more but it does not have any photos of the printer. You are most likely going to dump that catalog and search for the printer in another place.

This behavior is common to most consumers especially in this era of immediate gratification and impatience. Consumers do not want to spend time reading and figuring out what the product can do. They want to see a photo and get a short snippet of what the main features of the product are and what the price is.

Just taking photos and adding them to your catalog is not enough. Good photos can add a lot to a product image but at the same time bad photos can really damage that image. Here are some tips and concepts that can help taking good photos that in turn help selling products online:

Variation: Take more than one photo. Show the product from many angles: zoomed in and zoomed out and in different positions for example if the product is a clamshell-phone you should show it both in the opened and closed positions.

Quality: The photo quality must be as high as possible. Don't confuse quality with file size or resolution we refer here to photographic quality: Follow the rules of good photography, use a tripod when long exposure is needed make sure the photo is not overexposed or underexposed and that it is not blurry.

Background: It is very important to shoot with the appropriate background. Usually you would stage a background that is in contrast with the product and that has no details or distracting objects that can catch the viewer's attention. Make sure that the background is matte color and that it does not reflect light. For example when taking a photo of a black digital photo printer use a white or light gray background.

Show details: Emphasize the product details. Every product has unique features or important details that you would like to draw the viewer's attention to. The best way to do that is to take close-up photos of those details. You are not limited to physical details for example when selling an digital photo printer that has long battery life take a close-up photo of the digital photo printer's LCD screen displaying how much battery is left. Such a photo conveys credibility and is much more powerful than the product battery life specifications text.

Support the product description: Take photos that support the textual description of the product. For example if the text claims that the digital photo printer comes in three colors: black, silver and red show three photos of the printer in those colors.

Convey physical attributes: If your product has unique physical attributes that you would like to emphasize take photos that convey them. For example if the product size is important use a known size object in order to help the viewer visualize the size take a photo of the digital photo printer next to a quarter coin to show how small the printer is. It is much easier for viewers to visualize and understand measurements if they are put in reference with objects they know very well. This is much more powerful than specifying inches and ounces in a textual specification.

Keep file sizes small: This is relevant for online catalog only. Keep the photo file size small. When viewing a photo on a computer screen low resolution photos are more than enough. In most cases a VGA (640X480) picture is all that is needed and such a photo file size can be 50Kbytes or less. It is important to keep this in mind and not be tempted to put high resolution big photos files. Such big files load slowly on the viewer's computer and in most cases the viewer will get frustrated from the slow response and would just skip to the next site.

About the Author:

Mr. Haparnas writes about practical technology issues. Information about photography and photo prints is on printrates.com - your home for digital photo printing This article can be reprinted and used as long as the resource box including the backlink is included. Ziv Haparnas is an expert technology writer.

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Taking Digital Photos for Online and Printed Product Catalogs

Share Your Photos In A Unique Way With Photo Stamps

Author: Craig Thornburrow

Photo stamps can be a fun and unique way of sharing your favorite photo with family and friends. You can use photo stamps for just about any occasion and purpose, from letters, postcards, invitations to cards and packages.

Photo stamps come in several different rates from thirty nine cents for first class standard to twenty four cents for postcards and photo stamps. Larger postage rates can be made for packages. Photo stamps cost from about $17.99 for a single sheet of twenty thirty nine cent stamps and many photo stamps sites offer a discount when two or more sheets are purchased at one time.

Many people wonder how the United States Postal Service can tell the difference between a photo stamp and a counterfeit photo stamp. The information based indicia is how the United States Postal Service can tell the difference. The information based indicia is a specially designed two dimensional bar code on the printed photo stamps between the border and photos.

The special designed bar code contains information such as the date of the creation of the photo stamps and the software package serial number. A great deal of research has gone into the information based indicia technology and the end result is that photo stamps are completely reliable and trust worthy.

The size of each photo stamp postage measures 1.9 inches in width and 1.4 inches in height and the actual photo area is 1.1 inches in width and 1.1 inches in height. When creating photo stamps the most important thing is the photo you choose for your stamp so keep in mind the actual size of the final image when choosing your photo. You have two choices when choosing your photo for your photo stamps you can either choose to take the photo with the photo stamp in mind or you can choose a photo that has already been taken.

When taking a photo for your photo stamps the composition of your photo is very important. When setting up the shot for you photo stamp, it is important to choose a setting without a lot of background objects, such as trees and buildings. Next, you want to choose a pose that when shrunk down to the actual photo size of 1.1 inches by 1.1 inches you can still clearly see what or who the photos are of.

When using a person as the object of your photo stamp, it is a good idea to just use a close up of the face. When using multiple people, try for a close up head shot getting all the people included in the photo to lean their heads towards one another. When using an inanimate object for your photo stamp make sure that when shrunk down to the actual image size on the stamp that you can still make out what the object is.

When choosing to use a photo that has already been taken, you want to try to use a editing program to shrink the photo down to 1.1 inches by 1.1 inches to make sure you can still see the photo clearly. When choosing your photo make sure to pick a photo with a clutter free background.

You can choose either a color or black and white photo for you photo stamps, you can also use a custom drawing or design. When choosing a photo for your photo stamps close up shots that was focused and sharp work the best. When using a custom drawing or design the most important thing is to make sure the image will be clear and recognizable when shrunken down.

About the Author:
Craig Thornburrow is an acknowledged expert in his field. You can get more free advice on photo stamps and photo postage stamps at http://www.printingpostage.com

Article Source: ArticlesBase.com - Share Your Photos In A Unique Way With Photo Stamps