Never printed at home before - canon iP4700

[donoreo]

I finally have my iP4700 hooked up and ready to go. I did the head alignment so I should be good. I have done a few 4x6 test prints and they look ok. I have just done these out of preview (I am on a Mac) but I think I should get better from PS Elements?

What is my best way to print? I plan to print a few 8x10s to frame and use in my daughter's bedroom at our cottage (cabin, summer house, whatever you want to call it in the UK - in Canada it is a cottage on a lake).

I have Canon ink, and canon paper. My tests so far are on HP paper that I was given a 2 inch stack of for free.

Tips?

[GeoffWessex]

Keep your images at their largest size - if you make JPGs just use them for their specific purpose (web, email) but keep the best quality, highest ppi versions for printing.

If you haven't cropped anything off the image, you should take a look at the Crop tool. Set it to 8" x 10" in the Aspect Ratio box, but make sure you leave the Resolution box empty. Click and drag your shape - it's NOT going to be the dimension but it's going to be the RATIO. You'll see that you probably have to lose quite a bit off the image - 8" x 10" may be a popular frame shape but pictures haven't been taken in that format for many years (pre-35mm days) except on very large film cameras. Cropping is always going to be necessary and it's all part of the presentation process. Anyway, after the crop, you should still have an image that's in the 8x10 RATIO (but NOT dimensions).

When printing via PS Elements, in the Print dialog you select your paper size, then check your printer settings - firstly with "Page Setup" and when that's done, go to "Printer Preferences". You'll need to select quality, paper size etc in your own printer's control box. All these settings probably need to match. Take some time to read the printer's manual. Make your choices and OK it.

You'll come out of your own printer's control and back to the Print dialog. Go to the Color Management box, and Color Handling..... for the time being - as it's early days for you - choose "Printer Manages Colors".

Check that you have the right paper size in the middle 'Print Size' box - and then, below that, check on the box that says "Scale to Fit Media". Then check that the Print Resolution (ppi) figure at the bottom is at least 200 (you may get away with less but the higher the number, the higher the quality).

The biggest mistake people make is to reduce their image's ppi from the outset and then reduce size even more with cropping - by the time it gets back to printer paper size the "resolution" drops way down and you get bad prints.

More complex details concern Paper Profiles - you may find the paper you're using in the list of paper profiles in the printer driver (the dialog box in Printer Preferences), otherwise you would have to find a similar paper in the list - you won't go far wrong but ideally your paper packaging would show a generic setting to use. Any more 'fancy' papers and you need to either test it to see what works best unless you get a paper profile.

After that, you're getting into the world of "Colour Management"........ something that needs a book to cover.

[matt wilson]

as a start and to avoid wasting ink and paper Canon's easy phot print will do a pretty good job .It will automatically crop and print your 8 x 10 's and fit them to media .

I would let the printer do it's thing .Set for best photo quality .

As Geoff says if your printer and screen have not been colour matched then what you see see on screen may not quite match what's printed.

I have the IP 4600 and have found that works pretty well.