How to Make Better Prints from Digital Images

re your prints made from digital photos as good as film-based prints? Are the prints you can pop out of your PC as good or better than the ones a lab can make? These two questions raise numerous important issues, and if you will bear with me through bytes, pixels and mega-things, I hope to clarify a complicated subject.

Let’s start with some basic terminology

In a digital camera, a light-sensitive CCD (charge-coupled device) replaces light-sensitive film. In most digital cameras under $1,000, the CCD takes up a tiny space filled with millions of little light-sensitive spots called pixels — a crunching of the words “picture” and “element.” (If you look at a computer screen with a magnifying lens, you’ll see pixels, each with Red, Green and Blue (RGB) components in different intensities, according to the color at a specific spot on the screen.)

Digital cameras are sold according to the size of their CCD. A typical mid-range point-and-shoot will have a CCD that is 2,048 pixels long by 1,536 pixels wide. Multiply these two numbers together and you get 3.145 million picture elements on a space that’s about an inch square.

Think of the megapixel size as the highest resolution the camera is capable of producing. Cheaper digital cameras may only have a one-megapixel element, while a $5,000 digital camera can come with a 14-megapixel element.

Since each pixel has three-color components — the intensity of each of the RGB colors — a one-megapixel camera will produce three million pieces of information in a three-megabyte (Mb) file. When you take a photo at a one-megapixel resolution you generate a three-Mb file that the camera has to store either in its on-board RAM (temporary memory) or in some memory device like a Compact Flash card or Memory Stick, etc.

But, if every stored image takes up three megabytes, you’ll quickly run out of file space on most memory devices. This is where JPEGS (files with the extension .jpg) come to the rescue. JPEGS reduce the amount of memory a photo file takes up, so a three-megabyte file can be stored as small as a 300-kilobyte (Kb) file.

Computer screens have a resolution of 72 or 96 ppi or pixels-per-inch (remember: a basic camera makes images with 1 million pixels per square inch). This means that a photo that is stored at 72 ppi is going to look fine. But, when you print out a photo that is stored at 72 ppi, you get a picture like photo 1, a shot of wood pens by New York woodturner Stanley Graff. The photo is fuzzy and the pixels break up the image so that it’s hardly recognizable.

For color prints or pictures in a magazine like The Crafts Report, you need images that print minimally at 150 dpi (see photo 2), or 300 dpi for even better quality (see photo 3). Dpi means dots-per-inch and refers to the little dots of ink your printer lays down on paper to create an image.

If you do some math (not really necessary), you’ll find that shooting a photo with a three megapixel camera at its highest resolution (3mp), gives you a 9 Mb file. At 72 ppi, the resulting printed picture would be 20x30 inches in size and very fuzzy. Printed at 300 dpi, the photo becomes a sharp 5x7. In other words, a three-megapixel camera can make very good 5x7s. With a good photo manipulation program to tune the image, you can even make decent 8x10s.

Loading and enhancing the images on a PC

Taking a digital picture or scanning a film image is a “capture” process. Once you’ve captured a file, you need to export it from the camera and import it into your PC and a photo manipulation program. Most digital cameras come with card readers that connect to your computer, read your memory device or the camera’s on-board memory, and load the images into a photo manipulation program on your PC. I have a computer that is designed for photography and has four ports specifically for camera memory storage cards like CompactFlash cards, Memory Sticks, etc.

These three photos of pens by New York woodturner Stanley Graff show dramatic effect resolution has on an image's appearance: (Left) This 72-dpi image might look fine on a computer screen, but in print its quality is poor; (middle) this 150-dpi image is larger in file size, and somewhat better in quality, although still not good enough to be attractive in print; (right) this 300-dpi image creates a large but visually appealing file.

Once the files are in your PC, you’ll need to open them in a photo program. Most cameras and readers come with software to load on your computer. Many printers do, too. Of the programs for digital photography, I like Photoshop or MGI Studio.

These are amazing programs that can do complicated photo manipulations but they come without instructions. If you’re going to do a lot of printing at home, go out and get a text like “Photoshop Elements” by Barry Beckham (Lark Books, 2004) or “Photoshop for Dummies.” Both texts walk you through all the things you’ll need to learn to make really good pictures. Let me give you the basic steps.

Using a program like Photoshop, click on Open to find the image file. Double-click on the image you want and the image will appear in the Photoshop workspace. First, I rotate the image by clicking on Image and then Rotate, then either 90-left or 90-right until the image is right side up. Next I click on the Crop icon, and outline the cropped image I want. Use the toggles that appear on the dotted Crop frame. I adjust the borders. Then I click on the Crop icon again, and click on “yes” in the dialogue box that appears.

Then, I click on Enhance on the toolbar and click on Adjust Brightness/Contrast, then on Brightness/Contrast and use the sliders to increase lighting or contrast until the image looks really good on the screen. 

If I’m happy with the image, I save it before I print. Click on File, then Save As, and in the dialogue box, choose where you’ll save the photo. Next, name the file to identify the image. Then make sure the file is being saved as a JPEG by clicking on the arrow next to the file name box and clicking on the JPEG line. Then save, and when asked for percentage of compression, choose at least 75 percent.

Smaller is Better for the Web

While the number of pixels available is directly related to how large and how sharp you can make a print, there’s a flipside to all of this. When you put images on the Web you want files that can be downloaded quickly. For the Web you want to have images that are 50-100 Kb files. This is because a PC screen has a resolution of 72 ppi. Imagine what happens when you send someone a 3 Mb file. If they actually let the file completely download before they get upset and hit the Cancel button, the final received image will be 20x30 inches — bigger than their monitor screen! To see the image properly, they’ll have go to the Resize button and shrink the picture down to a manageable 4x6 inches on the PC screen. The Resize process basically throws away tons of pixels the image can’t use. So, why send them in the first place? Create small files for the Web.

Printing your images

I print photos either from Photoshop directly or from the Photo program that came with my printer. In either case, I click on Print Preview and see what the photo will look like before printing. I adjust the size as needed — and then I make an important change. I click on the printer’s Properties box and set the quality of print to its highest level (usually called Best Print) and then I adjust the setting for the paper type to Photo Glossy.

These small changes that replace the factory’s default settings will instantly improve the quality of the prints you’re getting from your printer. They add ink and they let the printer know to slow down the printing so the glossy surface can absorb the inks properly.

So, do better prints come from film or digital?

At small print sizes (under 5x7), film and digital cameras both produce great pictures. Above 5x7, the issue is how large is the digital file? A well photographed, 35mm color negative can easily produce a gorgeous, sharp, 16x20-inch color print. For an equivalent digital image, you’ll need a 54-megapixel file — about three times as much resolution as the $5,000 camera I mentioned above and almost impossible to get. But, for smaller prints, digital is faster, just as clear and easier. For really large prints, I’ll stick with film.

Are a lab’s prints better than the ones you print at home?

Look at it this way — the technician at my lab makes prints all day long on a high-quality machine. Both the technician and the machine are used to making the best prints possible. My local lab also has a Fuji Frontier color printer that, in the hands of a skilled technician, can produce staggeringly gorgeous prints.

With my photo-centered computer, extra RAM, CD and DVD writing capability, Photoshop 7.0 and years of printing film photos, I can print very high quality 8.5x11 prints.

But, it takes me hours, a lot of tweaking, and a ream of photo paper to get the prints I want. I enjoy this and it’s fun. You have to decide what works for you.

For small photos, you should be able to produce really decent prints in just a few printing sessions. For big prints, you should consider using a lab. In digital photography, it’s particularly true that the more you spend on gear, the more you get and the more you can do. You have to decide how big you want to be able print and how much time and money you’re willing to spend to do it. These are choices only you can make.