Photo Printers and Printing......

[CumminsPuller]

Got a question for all who scan or use a digital camera and print out their pictures. My wife as been taking some pictures with our Canon ELAN II. Great pictures at that. Anyway we have scanned some and made a Christmas card, using Photoshop and Dreamsuite, to send to family and friends. The printer is an HP PSC 2210. Supposedly a photo printer. We are using the office depot brand Premium High Gloss Photo paper. But even set on the best or highest qaulity the facial features and some other areas come out grainy. Now we have been told that if using an HP printer you should use HP paper. More than one person has mentioned this. Something else I am hoping one of you can explaon to me is the paper lb. rating. What is it and what does it mean? HP Photo paper has 125lb rating and some of the Kodak photo paper has a 69lb rating? Is this of importance? Any suggestions on any of this?



Jason

 

[Jacobs]

Jason



Grainy prints can be caused by a low scan resolution. We have a HP scanner and the program will let you scan various sizes of files. The bigger the file size the more resolution you will have when you save the file from Photoshop. Saving the file as a TIFF or bitmap file will be much larger than a JPEG and will give better prints.



I am no expert when it comes to Photoshop and printing but have discovered that file size of the print makes a big difference on print quality.



Another thing that can cause distortion is a dirty scanner glass.

We have had problems with that in the past.



The Kodak paper has done an fine job with our HP 5650 printer. It makes my 24" enhanced catfish look like a real thing trophy.



Have a good holiday.



Bruce

 

[CumminsPuller]

Bruce... ... ... . Good call. Just changed one of the .jpg pictures we were using in the christmas cards to a . tif and the file size went from 456kb to 2. 4 mb. Printed it out and it was so much better. A question for you though, how do you clean your glass on your scanner?



Jason

 

[Jacobs]

Sparkle glass cleaner and a paper towel. Windex or plain water should also work.



Take care.



Bruce

 

[CumminsPuller]

Thank you.



Jason

 

[radixr]

I am using Printshop 12 to print my photos. I use good quality photo paper, but not necessarily HP. After pushing print, go into setup and properties. From there, select "Paper Type" and "best quality" ( this may change automatically). I don't know if your software has the same selections. Good luck!!

Mrs. Radix (Betty)

 

[CumminsPuller]

Betty, thank you for your suggestion. Since I am not using HP paper, I choose 'Other Photo Paper' and selecting HP paper did not help either. For some reason just scanning a pic and printing it, prints out great. But once played with in Photoshop it does not come out well at all, atleast in this situation.



Jason

 

[hammersley]

Professional Photo folks use EPSON

printers. I know that sounds different - especially sinc HP has their developmental printing plant about 1 mile from my house - but when I bought my latest digital camera, from http://www.prophotosupply.com/ which is the best Photo place I've ever been to -Real Pros - AND NO PRESSURE! They talked me into a really inexpensive (like $175 last year - less now) printer that does professional quality - http://computing.kelkoo.co.uk/b/a/ps_355336/114901.html



It has 4 Cartrifges - one large black one - cost $30 ish and 3 color ones - that cost about $11 ish. That way you only change the cartridge that's empty and save on color.

 

[Koa Man]

With my digital camera the pictures are downloading directly into the computer and no scanning is necessary. The absolutely best photo printer is an Alps. I have one, along with a HP photo printer. The Alps photos will not smear even if they get wet. Colors are laid on one at a time. Slow printing but very high quality. Unfortunately, they are no longer imported into the US.