Digital SLR

Although some DSLR users will prefer the simplicity of having their photographs printed by a photolab, there are some powerful reasons for buying your own photo printer and printing at home. The latest printers are easy to operate and produce prints that are as good as - and often better than - photolab prints. They may also cost a lot less and prints tend to resist fading for much longer.

Provided the shot was taken with the top resolution and quality settings, printing at home is a simple and straightforward process. If you obtain disappointing results, check the resolution settings to ensure the files are large enough to print at the size you've selected (see the diagram in Choosing a DSLR Camera.)

Photo printers come in two types: inkjet and dye-transfer (or dye-sublimation). Both types can produce photo quality prints but inkjet printers are cheaper to run and capable of producing much larger prints. Most dye-transfer printers are restricted to snapshot-sized output, while inkjet printers span the range from snapshot to poster-sized - and larger. We'll focus on inkjet printers in this chapter as they are the most popular with keen photographers.


A typical snapshot printer that uses dye-transfer technology. Direct printing from a digital camera is supported via a USB cable and images for printing can be selected via the camera's LCD screen.

Desktop Printer Options
If you're looking for simplicity and portability, there are plenty of portable snapshot printers on the market that produce 10 x 15 cm prints. Most are PictBridge compatible (see Post-Capture Options) and some have card slots for direct printing (although not necessarily all card types). A few have viewing screens to make it easy to select shots for printing.

Family photographers are usually better off with a general-purpose A4 printer that can produce a range of output sizes. Affordably-priced high-quality 'photo' printers are available in both a single-purpose printer form and as part of a multi-function printer/copier/scanner unit. Many come with software for printing multiple copies of a photo on a single A4 sheet of paper. Some allow users to print their own photos as labels on specially-treated CDs and DVDs.

Most serious photographers will want a printer that accepts at least A3 size paper and many will require a model with roll paper capabilities for printing panoramas. These printers can be economical to run, particularly when making poster-sized prints. Many can also print on special 'fine art' papers that provide a 'quality' look to the picture.


Serious photographers require a printer that can make poster-sized prints and produces very high picture quality.

Buying Tips
Choosing a photo printer is relatively straightforward - provided you know what to look for. The simplest printers use four ink colours: cyan, magenta, yellow and black. In theory, all other colours can be produced by combining these four colours in different proportions. In practice, however, no inks are totally colour-pure so four-ink printers are seldom fully photo-capable.


The ability to fine-tune tones and adjust brightness and contrast in the printer driver is important for B&W printing.

To produce the full range of tonal nuances, printer manufacturers have developed new ink sets with increased colour and tonal accuracy. The essential message is that the more inks a printer can use, the greater the subtlety of tonal nuance it is capable of - and the better the end result. Printers with six coloured inks produce more photo-like prints than those with four colours.

The same is true for black-and-white (B&W) printing, where the purest greys and subtlest tones can only be produced with at least one grey ink in the ink set. Special 'advanced' B&W drivers allow a higher degree of tonal fine-tuning. The real differences show up with enlargements at A3 size and over, especially in portraits.

Printer buyers should also look for printers that can work in the Adobe RGB colour space, which has a wider gamut (range) than the 'universal' sRGB colour space. The number of nozzles in the print head and the minimum picolitre size of the ink droplets will provide a good idea of the printer's ability to reproduce very fine detail.

Preparing Images for Printing
Just about any image editing software - and some other applications as well - can be used for printing photos, as long as it interfaces correctly with the printer's driver and provides you with the functions you want to use. The former is particularly important as you normally need to set up the printer for the type of paper you are using via the printer driver.

 
The Image Size dialog box in your editing software allows you to adjust the size of the picture and the output resolution before committing to a print.

Before starting to print you must determine how large the image should be. In Choosing a DSLR Camera we showed the relationship between the sensor resolution of a digital camera, the maximum file size it produced and the recommended print size at 300 dots/inch (dpi), the ideal print resolution for most situations.

All printers come with driver software and most include a suite of software applications that may include a basic image editor and an organiser for cataloguing and viewing images. The printer driver allows the printer to interact with your computer and is normally installed from the supplied software disk before the printer is connected to a computer.

As well as allowing printer and PC to interact, printer drivers contain 'profiles' (or descriptions) of each type of paper that can be used with that printer. These profiles set the printer's operating parameters to match the requirements of the paper that is selected, giving the user the best possible chance of making colour-accurate photo prints. Because the profiles in each printer driver specify only the papers that carry the printer manufacturer's brand, photographers who wish to use third-party papers are forced to guess which paper setting in the driver is the best match for the paper they plan to use. This can be a hit-and-miss situation so it is generally best to use the printer manufacturers' inks and papers.

Printing via the Printer Driver
Selecting 'Print' when you have a digital photo open in an image editor normally takes you to the printer driver. Printing a digital photograph usually involves most of the following steps - although they may not necessarily be the order in which we have presented them here.

1. Check that the correct printer has been selected.
2. Check the paper size and orientation, using the Page Layout control to adjust settings, if required.


Most printer drivers allow users to set the output size and quality and choose whether prints will be produced with or without white borders. Some also allow multiple copies of the same image to be printed on a single sheet of paper.

3. Fit your image onto your paper, using the Output Size settings.
4. Click on 'Print' to go to the printer interface.
5. Click on 'Properties' to access the paper and printing settings.
6. Match the paper type to the paper you are using.
7. Select Print With Preview. This displays how the final print will look and allows you to check that the image is correctly positioned and sized. Note, the image is usually displayed at low resolution so it may look grainy and its colours and brightness levels may not match the final print.


For the best-looking prints, it's vital to match the paper type in the printer driver to the paper you will print on.

Some software applications have settings for printing more than one photo on a single sheet of paper. Most allow users to create multiple copies of a single shot or import a selection of pictures and print them on a single sheet of paper. This software interfaces with the printer driver.

Some printers offer a range of additional settings, including greyscale and sepia options for monochrome prints plus hue, saturation and brightness adjustments. It is usually better to make most of these adjustments in the image editor before moving to the printer driver. The majority of printer drivers allow photographers to choose between 'borderless' prints, in which the image extends to the edges of the paper and prints with white borders.

Unfortunately, most inkjet papers have been produced in standard printing paper sizes so if you choose the 'borderless' printing setting, your photographs may not fit exactly on the paper when they are printed. This is particularly true for shots taken with 4:3 or 16:9 aspect ratios, which are best printed with borders. Previewing the image before printing (step 7) allows you to check the position of the image on the paper so you don't make prints with off-centre images or inappropriate cropping.


Some editing software applications help users to set up collections of images for printing on a single sheet of paper. This can be a great time saver and may reduce paper wastage.

Most editing software - and many printer drivers - will allow you to scale the image to fit the paper you're using; just check the Scale to Fit Media box in the preview interface. In some applications you can also re-scale images by dragging out the corners until they fit on the paper as you want them. The driver can usually adjust the image data to produce high-quality prints unless a high degree of enlargement is involved.

Handling Prints
To minimise the risk of smearing, avoid touching the print surface as the print comes out of the printer. Wait for a minute or so before removing each print from the tray. Let the prints dry for about an hour before stacking them; and stack them with sheets of plain paper interleaved between the printed sheets so you avoid transferring any ink that may not have dried fully from one print to the next.

Inkjet prints will maintain their vibrant colours and tonal ranges for the longest time when they're protected from direct sunlight and airborne contaminants. The worst possible place to display them is on the refrigerator door, where they are subject to ozone and other damaging influences.

Have all prints that will go on display framed behind glass or encapsulated in plastic ('laminated') before they go on display. Choose photo albums with acid- and lignin-free pages and covers and glassine interleaving if you want your stored prints to last as long as possible.

USEFUL URLs
The following websites provide additional information on the topics covered in this article.
www.photoreview.com.au/pocketguides/printing-digital-photos-pocket-guide-4th-edition.aspx links to Photo Review's latest Printing Digital Photos Pocket Guide.
www.photoreview.com.au/tips/outputting/optimising-printing-efficiency.aspx provides advice on saving money when printing digital photos.
www.normankoren.com/digital_tonality.html provides an excellent series of guides to digital printing, covering monitor calibration, image editing, colour management and printing.
www.computer-darkroom.com/ provides tutorials in image editing, product reviews and feature articles and essays on printing and image editing.