Printing tips for Ink jet prints?help please.

[kindred1]

Ive recently retouched alot of photo's for my mother in law and was wondering what format to save them as so she can print them on her injet printer on photo quality paper? Or maybe she might take them somewhere to have them printed one day...Should i save them as tiff or bmp or what?thanks for any help,great board..

[G. Couch]

I would save them as a .tif file. I would also make sure to save them using a well known color profile, such as Adobe RGB....also make sure you have the file sized correctly.

It would probably help to make a few test prints using your mother in law's printer. This way, if the printer is printing images that are too dark or too light, you can adjust the files accordingly.

[kindred1]

thanks,this was a class project and i think i got hooked on it!...,ill send in some examples soon..thanks for all the help..have a great day!

[kaulike]

For simple printing, you can save as JPG at the size and resolution needed, and your mom-in-law will have no problem printing on an inkjet. Example, save as 5x7 at 300dpi = 1500x2100 (or so) pixels, JPG at 85% quality, and you'll have an image almost small enough to email yet of printable size and quality. You only need lossless technology if you plan to edit or resize the photo again later.

Be careful with Adobe RGB. Unless the recipient has it installed, and they probably won't if they don't have some version of Photoshop installed, the color space for the printer (and monitor, for that matter) will default to sRGB under Windows, or who knows what on the Mac. Not necessarily a bad thing, but maybe not precisely what you want.

TIF is quite wasteful. Try PNG and you'll never go back---image sizes are about 2/3 that of RAW or TIF, it's completely lossless, and most web browsers can read 'em.

Hope this helps!

[G. Couch]

Kaulike - You are probably right that JPG would work best in this situation, but I still say that if the images are going to be sent to a lab at any time, TIFs should be provided as well. It's an industry standard, employs lossless compression, and has excellent color support (supports ICC profiles, CMYK, LAB, etc...).

PNG is a good format, but I don't think it would be the best choice for printing at a lab. There are some issues with how Photoshop writes and interprets the Gamma correction tag in PNG files. It's not a problem when viewed in browsers, since they ignore the tag (at least i think they do!), but it could cause for some serious problems when a lab goes to print the image.

[Jakaleena]

Good point, Greg. I was thinking the same thing myself...

[kaulike]

You are probably right, I have never used any of these PNG files at a lab---it makes me wonder if I should continue archiving photos with it. I guess I can always convert back to TIF if I ever send them to a lab. I hadn't thought about that, thanks for reminding me!

[G. Couch]

I think archiving with PNG files is fine, especially since they compress much better than any other lossless format. The only issue I think you might have, will be how well the PNG file format is supported in the future. It does not seem like it is a format that ever really caught on and with the ever increasing use of Flash graphics and the continued use of jpeg and gif, I don't see it ever catching on, despite the fact that it really is a great format! If software companies stop supporting PNG, you might someday be stuck with images you can't open.