Resize for print

If you want to print a photo, it is more likely that you should change the resolution. When you change resolution, if you want little or no loss of quality, adjust the dimensions of the photo.

How can you see how big the picture will be when you print it?

In any case, NOT by clicking on the “Print size” button nor by the “Zoom” tool in the tool bar of the “Hand” tool.

Just click the button “File” in the menu bar and select “Print” in the drop-down menu.

We will not print, we’ll just see how the photo would come out on the printer.

The preview shows us that the picture is far too large for the A4 paper that comes from our printer

Click the button “Cancel” to close the dialog box.

Then we enter the dimensions and the dpi of the image for our printer.

We open the dialog “Image Size”

If you have forgotten how, click “Image” in the menubar, and select “Image Size” in the drop-down menu.

The first thing you do, is to disable the check box “Resample Image”.

We do not need this when we print a picture, remember? previous lesson.

 

We concentrate entirely on the section “Document Size”.

To print a photo on an inkjet printer, it should have a dpi of at least 220, but preferably a little more. Maximum 360, inkjet printer cannot handle more than that.

 

Now you can choose which box you want to fill in here, anything you choose, the other two will be filled automatically. That is because these are linked to each other.

As we still want to print the picture, you can, perhaps, best begin by filling out the box “Resolution”. This must have a value between 220 and 360, so you type 300 here for example.

This will automatically fill the width and height. If these are too high for what you want to use the photo for, for example, a picture on the box or a photo in the photo album have different dimensions, you can resize it.

In this case, for printing on A4 paper, I type in the box width as 24 cm, and you see immediately that the resolution is changed.

As long as the value of the resolution is around 300 pixels or more.  325 is fine, so I click the OK button.

 

When we view the photo in Photoshop, it appears as though nothing has changed.

But when we go back to look at the preview, we see that there is indeed something that has changed.  The photo can now perfectly fit on our A4.

What you must remember to print photos:  As long as the resolution of the picture is high enough, plying with the width and the height of the image is of no importance.

 

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